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Moscow is claiming that its forces have downed a US-made F-16 aircraft given to Ukraine just as the warplane was preparing to launch a missile strike from over a southeast region of the country.

“The F-16 aircraft was in position to launch a missile strike on the region, and it was shot down,” TASS reports Thursday. The alleged downing has not been acknowledged by Ukraine, the Pentagon, or any outside entity.

State-run RT has also described that “One of the F-16 jets donated to Ukraine by NATO has reportedly been downed while attempting to launch missiles at Russia’s Zaporozhye Region.”

“Preliminary information from the front line was reported on Thursday by Vladimir Rogov, the co-chair of Russia’s Coordinating Council for the Integration of New Regions,” the same report adds.

Despite these big claims being made in Russian media, the story has been slow to appear in Western mainstream press accounts as of Thursday afternoon. 

If true it would be the second US-donated F-16 to go down over Ukraine during the war, after a reported incident last August.

The August downing had come only days following an initial delivery of the fighter jets to Kiev, and was the result of a ‘friendly fire’ incident, based on the description of the crash by a Ukrainian member of parliament at the time.

“The pilot, Oleksiy Mes, died while helping to repel a massive Russian missile attack on Monday, the officials said,” WSJ wrote of that first downing. “Initial reports indicate the jet wasn’t shot down by enemy fire, U.S. officials said.” Accounts have remained conflicting.

As for this purported second downing, little details have been revealed. Ukraine is expected to keep mum about it even if the claims of a shootdown are accurate. If Russia starts shooting down Western-provided warplanes out of the skies at a higher rate, this would certainly help dissuade Ukraine’s allies from sending more.

The Zelensky government has been complaining about a slow-down and delays in arrivals of major weapons systems, including jets, from Western partners.

Some European countries have meanwhile been reluctant to commit too much military hardware at a time Ukraine forces are being bested by Russia along the frontlines in the east.

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times,

Entrepreneur Elon Musk suggested there should be cognitive tests for elected officials following news of a congresswoman spending six months in an assisted living facility.

“Maybe we should have some basic cognitive test for elected officials? This is getting crazy,” posted Musk on X, on Dec. 21.

Musk was responding to a report that Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) had been absent from Congress for six months as she was in a senior living center in Fort Worth, Texas, as she has been “having some dementia issues late in the year,” her son told The Dallas Morning News.

Granger, 81, returned to Washington last month after having last cast her vote on July 24.

“As many of my family, friends, and colleagues have known, I have been navigating some unforeseen health challenges over the past year,” said Granger in a statement from her office, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Granger, who has been in Congress since January 1997, announced last year she would not run for reelection after 14 terms.

“Serving my community has been the greatest honor, and I have always fought to improve the lives of my constituents,” she said in a statement at the time.

“As I announce my decision to not seek reelection, I am encouraged by the next generation of leaders in my district,” she said.

“It’s time for the next generation to step up and take the mantle and be a strong and fierce representative for the people.”

Granger, who was the first Republican female elected to Congress from Texas, stepped down as chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee in April.

“When my colleagues made me the first Republican woman to Chair the Appropriations Committee, my goal was to pass conservative bills out of the Committee, get them to the floor, and get them signed into law,” she wrote in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in March.

“Despite Republicans having a very slim majority, today marks the completion in the House of the second spending agreement this month that prioritizes our nation’s security and represents the first overall cut to non-defense, non-veterans spending, in almost a decade.”

Musk is not the only public figure to call for cognitive tests for elected officials.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, during her unsuccessful presidential campaign, called for mental competency tests for politicians age 75 and older.

The struggling Oklahoma-based electric van startup Canoo appears to have reached the end of the road.

According to an internal email obtained by TechCrunch, the startup has placed employees on a “mandatory unpaid break” through the end of the year.

The email said that just a few days before Christmas, the company locked employees out of Canoo’s systems. 

As of mid-November, the startup had $700k in cash or cash equivalents as it rounded out a very turbulent year amid an ongoing EV downturn. 

“It recently closed the Los Angeles office that used to serve as its headquarters. It has lost a lot of executives, including its chief technology officer, chief financial officer, and general counsel,” TechCrunch noted. 

Auto blog Jalopnik provided more color on Canoo’s struggles, including how “the company spent twice as much on a private jet for its CEO than it had earned for the entire year of 2023. It burned through capital and now seems unable to wrap up the year.” 

“Canoo was supposed to bring automotive manufacturing back to the state of Oklahoma, and the company received taxpayer-funded, performance-based incentives totaling $100 million spaced out over 10 years to do exactly that,” Jalopnik said, adding, “But the way things are going right now, it’s questionable whether Canoo will last long enough to bring those promised steady jobs to the Sooner State.” 

A former employee provided Oklahoma news outlet KFOR with deeper insight into the startup, alleging that it has produced nothing… 

“They have tons of equipment,” the former employee said. “It looks great. They have literally everything to run an entire assembly line for cars.”

Last December, Canoo proudly announced it had built its first three vehicles in the Oklahoma City plant, before selling them to the state.

The former employee told News 4 that “made in Oklahoma” announcement gave him a good laugh.

“I can tell you, those did not come off our assembly line,” the former employee said. “If you talk to any Canoo employee, they’ll tell you those do not come off the assembly line.”

He says Canoo never paid the company that provided the software that the machines use to operate.

The former employee also says the company only ran the machines when showing them off to media or investors.

“The majority of those folks that were employed there, especially those hourly people, were just standing around twiddling their thumbs,” the former employee said.

The company has boasted about partnerships with Walmart, DoD, and the USPS over the years…

Shares (GOEV) plunged into the abyss since it SPAC’d in late 2020. 

What a giant waste of money. 

Authored by Melanie Sun via The Epoch Times,

President Joe Biden on Christmas Day said he has directed the Pentagon to continue its “surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine,” following a wave of Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure early Christmas morning.

“The purpose of this outrageous attack was to cut off the Ukrainian people’s access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardize the safety of its grid,” Biden said in a statement.

“Let me be clear: the Ukrainian people deserve to live in peace and safety, and the United States and the international community must continue to stand with Ukraine until it triumphs over Russia’s aggression.”

The president said that the United States will “continue to work tirelessly” to back Ukraine against Russian forces in the ongoing war.

Ukraine’s air force said that the early morning attack by Russia using 78 air and ground missiles and 106 Shahed drones damaged critical equipment in Ukraine’s power grid, causing outages on Christmas Day.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried the deliberate attack on Christmas day as “inhumane.”

Ukraine shot down “more than 50 missiles and a significant number of drones” and was still hit as there are power outages in a number of regions as engineers are trying to restore power, Zelenskyy said.

“Russian evil will not break Ukraine and will not spoil Christmas,” Zelenskyy said.

The strikes wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one in the region of Dnipropetrovsk, the governors there said.

Christmas in Ukraine, where most of its people are Christian Orthodox, used to be celebrated on Jan. 7, as is the case in Russia, but that changed in 2023 to Dec. 25, the date used in Western countries.

Nearly three years into the war, Washington has committed $175 billion in aid for Ukraine.

President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office on Jan. 20, has said he wants to bring the war to a swift end.

Trump’s choice for special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, has condemned the Christmas Day attack.

“Christmas should be a time of peace, yet Ukraine was brutally attacked on Christmas Day,” Kellogg wrote on the social platform X.

“Launching large-scale missile and drone attacks on the day of the Lord’s birth is wrong. The world is closely watching actions on both sides. The U.S. is more resolved than ever to bring peace to the region.”

The shadow fleet of liquefied natural gas carriers transporting blacklisted Russian LNG has encountered a major setback, with at least one ship’s cargo traveling around the world, finding no buyers as the cargo was deemed too risky. 

Bloomberg reports that an LNG carrier called “Pioneer,” carrying a sanctioned shipment of Russian LNG, circumnavigated the world for four months, failing to find a buyer willing to breach US restrictions.

“This vessel (called Pioneer) was spotted on satellite images picking up the first shipment from the Arctic LNG 2 facility in early August — despite camouflaging the move with misleading location information — but then spent well over four months hunting for a customer,” Bloomberg’s Stephen Stapczynski wrote on X. 

This vessel (called Pioneer) was spotted on satellite images picking up the first shipment from the Arctic LNG 2 facility in early August — despite camouflaging the move with misleading location information — but then spent well over four months hunting for a customer pic.twitter.com/qIGcK4v1yr

— Stephen Stapczynski (@SStapczynski) December 26, 2024

According to ship-tracking data, Pioneer arrived at the Koryak floating storage unit in Kamchatka on Thursday after four months on the seas.

“The gas is likely to be held there until a customer can be found,” Bloomberg noted.

Most of Russia’s dark fleet consists of oil tankers. However, the West has increasingly targeted LNG carriers as Washington and Brussels race to sever Russian energy flows to Europe. 

Regarding global LNG trading – buyers, sellers, charterers, financing banks, and insurers must be extra vigilant when running compliance checks to ensure their ships do not engage in Western-sanctioned activities, and this is likely why Pioneer could not find a buyer. 

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

An energy policy battle is brewing and I believe Trump will win on day one.

Pulling the Plug on EV Mandates

The Wall Street Journal reports Trump Can Pull the Plug on EV Mandates

Overly stringent emissions targets ignore American consumers’ preferences and block economic growth. They’re also restrictive, costly and unachievable for U.S. manufacturers based on current market trends.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s electric-vehicle mandate also must go. The mandate would effectively require automakers to shift at least 54% of production to EVs and 16% hybrids to meet the 2032 requirements, an unrealistic target.

The Trump administration also should rein in California’s regulatory excesses. The Biden EPA last week greenlighted California’s aggressive electric-vehicle mandate by granting the state a waiver allowing it to set stricter environmental regulations than the federal government’s. The Trump administration should move immediately to revoke this waiver, an action likely to be challenged in court.

This matters for Americans across the U.S. That’s because other states are allowed to adopt California’s climate policies and impose those regulations on residents. New York, Maryland and Virginia are among several states that have adopted California’s zero-emission mandate.

We need a course correction. America doesn’t have access to the volume of critical minerals needed to produce that many EV batteries. It also doesn’t have the necessary electricity generation capacity or charging infrastructure.

America can and should lead the world in automotive innovation, but domestic automakers won’t survive if California-style, zero-emission vehicle mandates become the rules of the road.

The author of the above post is  Andrew Wheeler.

He served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, 2018-21 and is currently a partner and head of federal affairs at Holland & Hart.

Time to “un-California” US Energy Policy Is Now

The Journal says Trump “can” change energy policy. I am confident Trump “will” do so.

And whereas I think Trump will get some things wrong, energy policy isn’t one of them. I can’t think of anything Harris would have gotten right.

Also note, Trump Backs Down From Strong Sweeping Deportation Promise

With that change, Trump is highly likely to get deportation policy right, but Congress will have to approve.

I am so waiting for day one! We can’t get rid of Biden soon enough.

President Joe Biden has been criticized by judicial leaders for vetoing a bill that would have added more judges to the federal bench amid a heavy volume of pending cases.

Biden on Dec. 23 vetoed the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2024, or JUDGES Act, which would have added 66 new district court judgeships nationwide.

As Jackson Richman reports for The Epoch Times, Judge Robert Conrad Jr., the director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, said Biden’s decision was disappointing.

“Providing additional judgeships is essential to improving access to the courts and necessary for the efficient and effective administration of justice,” he said in a Dec. 24 statement.

Biden cited numerous reasons for declining to sign the bill into law, which passed the Senate in August and the House this month.

Biden said in a statement that the legislation “seeks to hastily add judgeships with just a few weeks left” in the current 119th Congress. The White House had previously warned that Biden would veto the bill before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Trump would have had the power to nominate judges to the federal judiciary. The GOP will control the Senate, which confirms nominees.

According to the president, the bill also “fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships.”

The bill “would create new judgeships in States where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies,” Biden said.

“Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about [the] judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.”

In a Dec. 16 letter to Biden, Conrad explained the need for expanding the number of federal district judges.

Contrary to Biden’s assertion, the bill was years in the making through “study, analysis, and congressional review” and “would address the need for additional district court judgeships, spreading them out over the next three presidential administrations.”

The number of cases before the district bench has spiked 30 percent since 1990, according to Conrad. This, in turn, has led to longer wait times over litigating criminal and civil cases, he said.

Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix the Court, which calls for reforms to the federal bench, called the veto “an embarrassing end to what has otherwise been, from many court-watchers’ point of a view, a productive four years of reshaping of the judiciary.”

Alliance for Justice, a left-wing judicial advocacy group, expressed support for Biden’s veto.

“Every chance to protect our courts over the next four years must be taken,” the group’s interim president, Keith Thirion, said in a Dec. 10 statement in response to the White House saying Biden would veto the bill. “It’s true our courts are overdue for expansion, but it is a disservice to the public servants committed to equal justice to so blatantly weaponize this process.”

The bill would have allowed Trump to fill some of those vacancies, though the timeline to fill them would have stretched into 2035 as the new judgeships would have been created in two-year waves during that period.

As of Dec. 25, there are 32 vacancies at the district level.

Jonathan Turley goes further, calling the move by Biden , ‘a disgrace’.

Our courts are overwhelmed by dockets that leave parties without any resolution for years. In 2004, the number of cases in district court pending for more than three years was 18,280. This year, there are 81,617.

If justice delayed is justice denied, our court system is becoming a tar pit of injustice, with litigants left without verdicts or relief for years.

Every responsible and independent group in the area supported this bill as essential to supporting and maintaining our legal system. The White House did not oppose the bill until Democrats lost the election. (Some Republicans also withheld their support until after the election).

Before the election, both Democrats and Republicans supported the bill in an all-too-rare moment of bipartisanship. Biden then vetoed it because he did not want a Republican to appoint new judges (even though the new judgeships would be added over a ten-year period).

In vetoing the act, Biden once again shredded any claim to being a president who could put the public interest ahead of petty political interests. It ends his presidency on a cynical, obstructionist note.

Nevertheless, Ryan and others on the far left are applauding the act as just what they want to see in a president.

It is one thing to discard any sense of integrity or responsibility, but do us a favor: leave the Founders out of it.

Via Off-Guardian,

Welcome to our third Christmas edition of This Week, where we pull out just the most seasonal, tinseliest headlines we can find, take a step back, and laugh at just what a clown world we’re all suddenly living in.

1. Wood Burning Stoves Cause Cancer

Anyone following British news or social media for the last two weeks has probably already seen this story – we mentioned it in our story on the Great Reset:

Terrifying cancer risk of trendy wood burning stoves – as experts warn they are UK’s biggest source of dangerous air pollution

Wood-burning stoves are “more polluting than cars” now, they cause cancer. And birth deformities. And asthma. And make “long covid” worse.

We need rules. And bans. And more rules. And more bans. Yes, OK, we already have regulations on wood burning, but they don’t enforce them enough, and “these people will only stop when they are made to”:

What kind of people burn wood when the Royal College of Paediatricians have asked them not to, for the sake of children’s health? Your middle class London neighbours, that’s who. They won’t stop until they’re made to. Story by ⁦@horton_official⁩ https://t.co/d7UNMgiYgP

— Fiona Harvey (@fionaharvey) December 19, 2024

I just can’t believe we’ve lived to see a time where “these people” is being used to venomously describe people who…*checks notes*…burn wood to keep warm.

This is all about clean air, you understand, and not even slightly about the fact wood burning stoves offer energy and fuel independence. That’s just paranoia.

2. …and so do scented candles

Now, maybe you’re thinking, “OK, so maybe my woodburner is illegal now, at least my cinnamon candles make it feel like Christmas”. No such luck, because here comes the Conversation with their mood-killing candle-snuffer:

Scented candles and holiday fragrances may actually harm your home’s air quality

The research is one of those pieces of research which abandons logic in pursuit of some higher truth, and includes this gem of a sentence:

If equal weights of cigarette and incense sticks are burned, the incense sticks produce around four times as much particulate matter as the cigarettes

Wonderful exemplar of the madness of “The Science”, the juxtaposition of technical truth with complete abandonment of reason. Totally disregarding a) that equal weights of incense and cigarettes are not burned, b) the differing nature and composition of their “particulate” or c) the fact people don’t put incense sticks in their mouths.

Anyway, don’t even think about staying warm or smelling nice. You’ll get cancer. And die.

Look out for “improving our air quality” to be a major talking point in 2025. More bans coming.

3. Merry Surveillance and a Happy New World

In the spirit of giving this Holiday Season, the British government has decided to gift us all the long-term comfort of security by promoting their digital ID platform!

From their press release:

Christmas celebrations are set to get a digital upgrade next year, as the UK government plans to roll out a new law allowing pub and bar-goers, as well as shoppers, to use their phones to prove their age when buying alcohol, should they wish to do so. People can continue to use physical forms of ID if they prefer.

See how it’s going to work?

It’s just like the smoking ban, where each year the minimum age to buy cigarettes increases, except in reverse.

If digital ID is the easiest way for young people to prove their age and get drunk, they’ll never need to make it mandatory. Each year the next crop of 18-year-olds will volunteer to be cattle tagged so they can go out drinking with their friends.

Meanwhile, the physical ID that “people can continue to use if they prefer” will be increasingly expensive, subject to longer and longer waiting times to acquire, and probably expire more quickly. Not to mention how bad for the environment the Guardian will tell everyone it is.

4. A Very Climate Christmas

Speaking of the Guardian, did you know “average Briton produces 23 times more CO2 on Christmas Day”?

Of course you didn’t. That’s because the Guardian just paid some people to make it up. Sorry, they “commissioned researchers to write a report” which is totally different.

However it happened, the math exists and is vaguely described. It doesn’t really make any sense if you think about it for five minutes, but we don’t have five minutes. The author quickly rushes us past the numbers and into the opinions.

The Graun has rounded up a few people to talk about how bad Christmas is for the planet. That includes the appropriately named Melanie Nazareth, who warns that people are conditioned into mass consumerism at Christmas time:

“We have been deliberately sold a vision of Christmas that is based on material consumption. We are constantly bombarded by advertising and media that tells us that if we aren’t spending money on things, we are not doing Christmas properly…

Which, to be fair, is a more than reasonable point, if only she didn’t add:

…This is destroying the whole meaning of Christmas as well as destroying the planet.”

I just can’t shake the image of Klaus Schwab, the Ghost of Resets Past, hanging in the air, rattling his chains and wailing “yooouuuu will ooooown nothing and beeee happyyyyy!”

Makes it an uncomfortable read.

BONUS: Scary Turkey Germs

Just when you thought, maybe, you could have a meal or even an entire day without having to be frightened – here comes the Daily Mail to scream:

How your Christmas turkey leaves the kitchen smeared with food poisoning bugs: Grim photos reveal exactly where bacteria spreads – and will make you think twice about scoffing mince pies

The article itself is a joke. They smear blue stuff on someone’s hands, have them use the kitchen, then show the pictures of blue stuff everywhere and say “Imagine this was bacteria! It got everywhere!” like that means something.

*  *  *

All told a pretty hectic Holiday Season for our New Normal World, and we didn’t even mention the Christmas tree being burned in newly liberated Syria or racist dangers of confederate Christmas decorations.

Merry Christmas Everyone.

Azerbaijani government sources told Euronews on Thursday that a Russian surface-to-air missile hit Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J28243, ultimately causing the plane to crash during an emergency landing attempt in the Kazakhstani city of Aktau shortly thereafter.

Another video showing the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 pic.twitter.com/Ze5pQ7Grv9

— BNO News Live (@BNODesk) December 25, 2024

A Russian SAM was fired at the Embraer ERJ-190 during a drone swarm above Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya, Russia. The SAM detonated near the commercial jet and unleashed a spray formation of shrapnel that damaged the plane’s rear fuselage and flight controls. 

BREAKING: Approximate location where Azerbaijan Airlines flight AXY8243 (J28243) was hit by a Russian anti air missile. This happened at 08:15 local time at an altitude of about 1000m. The flight would crash 1h 13m later in Aktau, Kazakhstan. pic.twitter.com/34n0G7Ag40

— planatoli (@planatoli) December 26, 2024

Here’s more from the media outlet:

Government sources have told Euronews that the damaged aircraft was not allowed to land at any Russian airports despite the pilots’ requests for an emergency landing, and it was ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan.

According to data, the plane’s GPS navigation systems were jammed throughout the flight path above the sea.

Shortly after the Embraer ERJ-190 crashed in Aktau on Christmas Day, footage of the wreckage emerged on X, and that’s when internet sleuths began to notice “traces of shrapnel on the rear fuselage section of the aircraft.” 

!! There is no official statement that Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243 was shot down, or shots fired at it, following a video shared on social media showing traces of shrapnel on the rear fuselage section of the aircraft. https://t.co/dWMPUUBynJ pic.twitter.com/6G1E2Kluqr

— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) December 25, 2024

The flight-tracking website Flightradar24 posted altitude and vertical speed data indicating the plane “struggled to maintain altitude for more than an hour.“

Here is a graph with altitude and vertical speed data for flight #J28243

The aircraft was struggling to maintain altitude for more than 1 hour (05:14 UTC to 06:28 UTC) pic.twitter.com/mLItiOkzS1

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) December 25, 2024

It is suspected that the SAM’s shrapnel spray pattern damaged the Embraer ERJ-190’s vertical stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer, and elevators—possibly explaining why the normal landing configuration might not have been achieved.

This resulted in an aggressive landing approach, contributing to a steep glide slope that led to the hard landing and eventual crash.

Initial jobless claims for the week ending 12/21 were flat on the prior week at 219k, holding near 8 month lows…

Source: Bloomberg

But, continuing job less claims keep rising, this week topping 1.9mm once again at the highest since Nov 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

So once again America – is the labor market naughty or nice?