Author: condor

“Hizzoner” Giuliani Cannot Suddenly Spring Up — With Surprise Witnesses In Manhattan, Come Thursday…

~ condor ~ 1 Comment

He will lose come this Thurday, in his bench trial before the able USDC Judge Liman in Manhattan. That is all but certain.

His right to offer evidence has been largely curtailed via his own lies and omissions, as we’ve repeatedly noted.

And here is the order setting ground rules, well-reasoned. Here’s that opinion in full — and a bit:

…In deciding whether to exclude a witness from testifying as a sanction for a violation of Rule 26, the court considers the Softel factors: “(1) the party’s explanation for the failure to comply with the [disclosure requirement]; (2) the importance of the testimony of the precluded witness[es]; (3) the prejudice suffered by the opposing party as a result of having to prepare to meet the new testimony; and (4) the possibility of a continuance.” Patterson v. Balsamico, 440 F.3d 104, 117 (2d Cir. 2006) (quoting Softel, Inc. v. Dragon Med. & Scientific Commc’ns, Inc., 118 F.3d 955, 961 (2d Cir. 1997)). “Preclusion is considered ‘a drastic remedy’ that is generally disfavored within the District.” Rosado v. Soriano, 2021 WL 4192863, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 6, 2021) (quoting Rivera v. United Parcel Serv., 325 F.R.D. 542, 548 (S.D.N.Y. 2018)). “Before the extreme sanction of preclusion may be used by the district court, a judge should inquire more fully into the actual difficulties which the violation causes, and must consider less drastic responses.” Outley v. City of New York, 837 F.2d 587, 591 (2d Cir. 1988). There is no serious dispute that Defendant violated Rule 26(a)(1)….

Defendant failed to include the Third-Party Witnesses in the initial disclosures and failed to amend those disclosures to include Placa’s name until December 23, 2024 (and failed to ever name Goodman). He also failed to include telephone numbers as required by Rule 26(a)(1)(A)(i). His failures were not substantially justified or harmless. Defendant offers no justification or explanation for the failure to identify Ryan, Placa, or Goodman. Defendant proposes to offer Ryan and Placa to testify to his alleged relocation from New York City to Palm Beach. Dkt. No. 157. But he does not offer any reason why, if those persons have relevant information, he would not have known the information and have formed the view that they might be used as witnesses at the time of the November 4 initial disclosures…

What a… putz.

[“Hizzoner” has filed what he calls an “interlocutory appeal”, from this evidence non-admission opinion, to the Second Circuit. But trial will occur this week And he will lose in both courts — evidentiary matters are to be appealed only after judgment.] Onward, to Thursday — and his shellacking.

He loses the Florida condo, is my experienced bet.

नमस्ते

Hinderaker: Being Drunk On The Job Is No Issue, Leading The Pentagon. Damn.

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Climbing on the stage in a strip club, with other military officers while drunk at midday — having to be restrained?

No issue, according to Hinderaker.

Sexually assaulting women while stagger-drunk?

No issue — to lead the US military agencies, full of women who must work under him.

A man whose own mother said in 2018 that “you are an abuser of women” — that she was “ashamed” of him, in the way he treated his now SECOND ex-wife.

No issue, sniffs senile old John.

Here’s his quote, in Hinderaker’s afternoon comments:

…I saw no evidence of anything new, and no evidence of any interest on the part Democrats in how the Pentagon is run.…

I gather Hinderaker believes ole’ Pete when he says if he’s confirmed… he WILL then “stop drinking on the job.”

Yeh — that’s the guy I want running the nuclear football.

Cra-cra….

Out.

It Seems Over A Third Of All Ultra-Massive Black Holes In The Known Universe Are Deeply Hidden, In Vast, Torus-Shaped Dust Blankets…

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In part in an effort to “find” the so-called “missing mass” of the then known Universe (such that the Universe doesn’t forever just fly apart into an infinite time period), but eventually collapses back into a closed system / singularity — to restart, from another “big bang”, JPL operated a space-based ‘scope for ten months in 1983, looking at the whole sky, in infrared.

This ultimately led to a ground-based telescope studies, in the last few years, in which hundreds of initial targets were sorted.

Some of them turned out to be not heavily obscured black holes but galaxies with high rates of star formation that emit a similar infrared glow. So the authors of the new study used visible-light telescopes to identify those galaxies and separate them from the hidden black holes. The result confirms that at least one third of these super massive giants are never going to emit visible wavelength light, as their torus shaped dust clouds blot them out, when viewed edge on. Here’s the latest — but incrementally increases the chances that the math works for the Universe to be a closed system, in a potentially endless series of expansion / collapse epochs:

…To confirm edge-on, heavily obscured black holes, the researchers relied on NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array), an X-ray observatory also managed by JPL. X-rays are radiated by some of the hottest material around the black hole. Lower-energy X-rays are absorbed by the surrounding clouds of gas and dust, while the higher-energy X-rays observed by NuSTAR can penetrate and scatter off the clouds. Detecting these X-rays can take hours of observation, so scientists working with NuSTAR first need a telescope like IRAS to tell them where to look….

The new study published in the Astrophysical Journal found that about 35% of supermassive black holes are heavily obscured, meaning the surrounding clouds of gas and dust are so thick they block even low-energy X-ray light.

Comparable searches have previously found less than 15% of supermassive black holes are so obscured. Scientists think the true split should be closer to 50/50 based on models of how galaxies grow….

Onward — smiling into the chilly sunshine, after a new one inch dusting of fluffy snows overnight (twice at around 7:15 am local)… be excellent to one another. And I cannot resist noting that Jack Smith confirmed what we all knew — and Pete Hegseth shows himself to be the lil’ troll he is, at hearings today. Ugh.

नमस्ते

So… Elon Musk May Find… There Are Some Rides He CANNOT Just “Buy.” Heh.

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As irony would have it, this three part sci-fi book I’m just now finishing makes a main character (set in the late stages of the 21st Century) out of an ultra-rich guy who is Hell-bent on terraforming Mars… a very soft-echo of one Elon Musk (except that he’s Russian). And the guy looks more and more to be… a baddy, as the second of the trilogy gets underway. [Very much like… the real one.] But I am sure it is all just… coincidental, though (cough!).

Meanwhile with the Tangerine 2.0 honeymoon already falling apart between them, the real life story is looking more and more like he’ll never get to Mars, at all — let alone be green-lit to… terraform it. Here is this rather snarky Politico item, and a bit:

. . .Trump confidant Elon Musk wants NASA to drop its ambitious plans to return to the moon and instead head straight to Mars. Congress is ready to put up a fight.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who control NASA’s purse strings, want Americans to return to the lunar surface in 2027 — and they’re not willing to abandon that mission despite Musk’s obsession with skipping the moon for Mars….

The SpaceX founder dreams of a Mars mission that would preserve human life beyond Earth, even if it costs hundreds of billions of dollars and poses extreme risks to those involved. He’s called colonization of the planet “life insurance for life.”

“We’re going straight to Mars,” Musk posted recently, adding that the moon focus was a “distraction.”

The Mars-first strategy, though, would likely find little support on Capitol Hill….

Despite the more prosaic political lens in the above pull quote, in point of fact… crew safety would be a primary reason. NASA has admitted that the cancer risks from that duration of time in space — outside our protective magnetosphere… will be daunting. And we collectively have not solved the “in capsule” shielding tech challenge. Not even remotely.

So it goes — and life (again) is imitating art — or is it… the other way around? I dunno. Grin.

नमस्ते

Claims Of Fraud — In Science — Are Much The Same As Claims Of Fraud, In Business… Only Waged On Much Smaller Scales. A Fossil Fraud(?), From A Phosphate Mine In Morocco?

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The purported discovery was in 2021, near the height of COVID related travel curtailments. Few saw the original site / find (and almost no independent party actually witnessed the “excavation“, physically) before the claim was published. [But to be fair, some cohort of miners / mine owners, not scientists. . . may have “salted” the find, and then called the scientist team in. That is, we will likely never know — exactly — how it came to be.]

And as I indicate below the pull-quote, I must note that it is Elon Musk that has put me in mind of this story, I saw early on Sunday, anew.

In any event, the guy at right was likely not found at the bottom of a phosphate mine, in Morocco. Whatever this jaw-bone was, it unlikely belonged to the monster at right. Here’s the story, from LiveScience:

…A mosasaur species with saw-like teeth that was described by scientists in 2021 may have been based on forged fossils, and researchers are now calling for CT scans to determine the creature’s origin….

The scientists behind the original study described the species, named Xenodens calminechari, from a partial jaw bone and four sharp teeth unearthed in a phosphate mine in Morocco’s Khouribga province. Those teeth prompted the team in 2021 to make claims about its uniqueness, and these are key to the doubts raised in the new study, which was published Dec. 16, 2024, in the journal The Anatomical Record.

Mosasaurs were predatory marine reptiles that dominated the oceans during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). They were hugely diverse, reaching lengths of between 10 and 50 feet (3 to 15 meters) feet. They also had varying tooth shapes befitting their different diets. The 2021 team claimed that X. calminechari had “small, short, bladelike teeth packed together to form a saw-like cutting edge….”

Two of the mosasaur’s closely-packed teeth sit in one tooth socket. This conflicts with all other known mosasaur species, in which each tooth has its own socket, according to the new study. Rather than being constructed out of bone from the jaw, tooth sockets are “made by bone that develops from the tooth itself. Each tooth crown makes its own house,” said study co-author Michael Caldwell, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta. In other words, there should be only one tooth per socket.

Mosasaurs “replaced their teeth continuously throughout their lives,” he told Live Science. “Every time one of these teeth is resorbed and falls out, there’s a huge pit left over. And that’s because the next tooth is coming into that hole to build all that tissue back up again so that it’s firmly anchored in the jaw.”

Additionally, rather than sitting flush within the jaw, two of the teeth also appear to have a little material, or “medial overlap,” extending over them on one side. That overlap shouldn’t be there in normal mosasaur tooth development. “The fact that there’s that medial overlap is a huge indicator” of a possible forgery, study co-author Mark Powers, PhD candidate at the University of Alberta [said]….

In a book I’m reading (my original artwork — at right — on it) there was a line from an archeologist that here applies — she said something to the effect that “academic battles in archeology are fought very fiercely — in no small part because the rewards are so very… small.” She compared these sorts of battles to anything Musk might battle in a business boardroom or court for… as “electron microscope level” by comparison. I think she may well not be wrong.

And the book, to be fair, is science fiction [a book about a 300 million year old metal burial chamber, covered in symbols, found embedded about 300 feet into a crater-wall, on Barsoom — perhaps also faked, in the telling of this author] — but I expect the quote from the unnamed archeologist… is not wholly-invented.

नमस्ते

What Rudy’s SECOND Contempt Order In Two Federal Courts, In A Week, Means…

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I wanted this to get the full ride of a Monday morning traffic burst, so here it is. [Prior backgrounder, here.] The former “Hizzoner” still faces a felony trial in Arizona federal courts for his efforts to defraud the 2002 electoral process there. That may, along with these two civil contempt citations… send him to jail.

So, he been ordered to shut his mouth about the Georgie workers. He’s going to be ordered as early as today to put the World Series rings in the hands of the US Marshals — in USDC Judge Liman’s Manhattan courtroom — for “safe-keeping” — since he and his son cannot be trusted to comply with clear court orders.

He still has to answer on contempt this coming Thursday in Manhattan for his hiding of assets owed to the Georgia election workers. In sum, the man will now lose his Florida condo, and will need to rely of friends for shelter. He is nearly broke, disbarred and increasingly demented in his speech patterns. What a mess. Here’s that Friday order, in full — and a bit:

…The Court finds, based on clear and convincing evidence, that defendant violated the Consent Judgment. The Consent Judgment, to which defendant agreed and requested that this Court enter, see Stipulation and Consent to Entry of Final Judgment, ECF No. 14, contains a provision that permanently enjoins him from engaging in conduct described in part (a) and part (b). Consent Judgment at 5. He violated part (a), which enjoins defendant from making “any statements that suggest that Plaintiffs, whether mentioned directly, indirectly, or by implication, engaged in wrong-doing in connection with the 2020 presidential election,” by making at least… four [completely false and slanderous and libelous] statements in three talk show videos that were live streamed to social media on November 12, 14, and 19, 2024….

Defendant [Giuliani] understands and acknowledges that no factual matter set out in the Freeman I Sworn Testimony or the conclusion reached in the Georgia Report of Investigation, referenced in paragraphs 1 and 3 above, has been contradicted or otherwise undermined in any way by any other sworn testimony or formal report issued by any government body; it is further

ORDERED that defendant shall be assessed a $200 fine for each day that defendant does not comply with this condition after January 20, 2025, which fine shall be paid directly to plaintiffs’ law firm as partial reimbursement of the attorneys’ fees and costs….

The man is unlikely to live very long, if he does end up in the Bureau of Prisons in Arizona some time in 2026. His health is just too frail. But this is the path he’s willfully chosen. And Tangerine has no power to pardon those state level felonies. [And trivially, my Broncos came up short yesterday afternoon in Buffalo against the great Josh Allen.] Onward.

नमस्ते

WHO’s Just-Released 45th Situation Report: Multi-Country Outbreak Of Mpox

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The masthead above [and below] details how the spread has progressed, from Clade 2 — now to the more dangerous Clade 1b.

There can be no mistake — this is more than a regional (African) emergency. As the report intro indicates, “the outbreak of clade Ib monkeypox virus (MPXV) continues predominantly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Uganda, with new travel-related cases identified in previously unaffected countries. Recent travel-associated mpox cases highlight the risk of undetected transmission in countries, emphasizing the need for strengthened surveillance and timely reporting to improve global monitoring and prevent international spread“.

Additional detailed info may be found here, and a bit of it appears below:

…▲ The outbreak of clade Ib monkeypox virus (MPXV) continues predominantly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Uganda, with new travel-related cases identified in previously unaffected countries.

▲ Recent travel-associated mpox cases highlight the risk of undetected transmission in countries, emphasizing the need for strengthened surveillance and timely reporting to improve global monitoring and prevent international spread.

▲ The Democratic Republic of the Congo remains the most affected country, experiencing circulation of both clade I MPXV subclades. Despite many of the provinces reporting stable trends in cases, the situation in the country remains concerning with continued high circulation of the virus.

▲ Burundi and Uganda continue reporting between 100-200 new mpox cases per week, with a plateauing trend, possibly impacted by a decline in surveillance and reporting during the December festive season.

▲ Since the last update (23 December 2024), Uganda has reported six deaths, bringing the total to 12 deaths among confirmed mpox cases in the country.

▲ A travel-related case of mpox due to clade Ib MPXV in Germany (the second importation) led to secondary household transmission.

▲ Clade Ib MPXV has been detected in three additional countries, Belgium, China and France, directly or indirectly linked to travel to affected countries in Central Africa.

▲ Kosovo has reported its first case of mpox Clade 1b….

▲ Information on the MPXV clade in some other nations is not yet available….

Now you know — onward, resolutely. And go you Denver Broncos! Smile….

नमस्ते

I Gather Hinderaker Actually Means… Lying Is America’s “Core Value”.

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That putz John thinks asking that people tell the truth is… socialism.

He thinks lying about vaccine science is a good thing.

He thinks Tangerine 2.0 lying about the cause of the LA fires is a good thing.

And he thinks lies labeling domestic (former US Army) terrorists as foreign born… to stoke xenophobia — is a good thing.

The senile, bitter old coot Hinderaker was never moral… but now he’s an… anarchist for MAGA.

Damn.

First Commercial Robotic Lunar Landing Mission To Launch From Canaveral This Coming Week…

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To be fair, it will reach orbit using a Musk / SpaceX rocket. [There. I said it.]

But from there on, it will be Firefly and NASA — to attempt the first commercial robotic lunar launch (a mission that a Japanese firm failed to complete without a hard landing, in April of 2023).

Here’s the latest — good luck, to them all!

…Carrying NASA science and technology to the Moon as part of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 is targeting launch Wednesday, Jan. 15.

The mission will lift off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida….

After the launch, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander will spend approximately 45 days in transit to the Moon before landing on the lunar surface in early March. The lander will carry 10 NASA science investigations to further our understanding of the Moon’s environment and help prepare for future human missions to the lunar surface, as part of the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach….

Now you know. Onward, into the chilly sunshine, with Rudy in contempt in DC — his second in a week’s time. Hilarious!

नमस्ते

I Get It. Hinderaker Thinks A Felon Prez. Is No Big Deal.

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Most of America knows that being a felon is… a bad thing.

But not John. To him, he burps and calls these “process” crimes. Honestly, I don’t even know what he means by that because murder is a process too.

But to be sure, John just nakedly reaffirmed that the Republican Party has become the party of crooks. We all knew it, but watching John celebrate it is the proverbial horse of another color.

Tangerine 2.0’s time — like yours, John — will very soon be… at an end.

Out.