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As I Hoped — They Are Now Eating Their Own…

~ condor ~ Leave a comment

Paul Mirengoff has been more critical than most of his fellow hard right travellers — of Tangerine’s nationalist agendas.

He was kicked out of Powerline for it. That led to his creation of “Ringside at the Reckoning” — on Substack. The effort to dump him was led by Hayward.

I strongly suspect Steve Hayward wrote him (another) rather scorching email about his mild criticism of Trump last week.

So today, he authors a more complete run-down of why a second Tangerine term would be bad for the nation — and even bad, for real conservatism (whatever little that notion may now hold).

The critique is under-stated, but correct — in a directional sense.

It will likely mean a decrease in his paid subscribers, and maybe even some new shunning at CPAC and elsewhere.

It is all well… with my soul.

Let them eat their own.

Out.

So… Selling Consensual Sex Videos… Is WORSE Than Forcible Sexual Assault, John?! Scott?!

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I don’t really care what consenting adults might pay other consenting adults for, in the way of remote access videoed “shows”.

I don’t. It’s not my jam, but really… who cares? John and Scott, it seems.

They both cluck ever so self-righteously about a woman who lost her bid for office yesterday — apparently because they are so much holier than she is (in their lumber strewn eyes).

But these same boys were silent as the grave when (this past summer) Tangerine was essentially found liable for lying about a forcible sexual assault in NYC.

Of a woman, in a department store dressing room.

Again, what CONSENTING adults do — to, or for — one another, in private, is mostly none of my concern.

But yes — I think a large, sweaty 300 pound man forcing himself on a 110 pound woman as she protests… should be disqualifying, for public office.

These boys… impliedly… don’t.

How… utterly unsurprising.

Out.

USDC Judge Chutkan Just Ruled That Tangerine Must Disclose ALL Docs He Might Rely On, For An “Advice Of Counsel” Defense — In DC.

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Not only that, he must do so immediately after asserting that defense.

His lawyers are arguing, without a single thread of authority, that he should be allowed to keep hiding these “reliance” / advice documents until the eve of trial, in March 2024.

The able USDC Judge Chutkan is having none of that, as it is a transparent attempt to knock the trial date off the rails, by dumping thousands of documents on Jack Smith, right on the eve of trial.

If such documents are out there — in order to win (as the able judge notes, near the top of her first page) Tangerine will have to show that he disclosed ALL relevant facts to counsel. The reason she mentions that on the first page of her opinion tonight… is to (not so) subtly remind these lawyers that they will have to say they were aware that he was lying about whether the election had in fact been “stolen“, when he tried to order Mike Pence not to certify the results on the morning of January 6, 2021.

And… any lawyer who is willing to say they told Tangerine his actions were lawful, even though they KNEW that HE knew he didn’t have the votes in various states to overturn (Georgia most notably, as he is separately charged with felonies there now — on that score)… would themselves be putting their law license in danger by saying that was the advice they gave him. [Eastman is already in that pickle, and this might implicate several others.]

So she is broadly hinting… that Trump will attempt to drag lawyers into the dock with him, if they sign on for this (his) nonsense.

And, most of all — she doesn’t want to spend time (potentially delaying the trial date) while Jack Smith forcibly drags the “reliance” documents from the lawyers’ hands. They must turn them over very shortly — if he’s going to try that gambit.

Cool. Cool.

Billings-puss And Mirengoff: Now Both Are Trashing Mr. Obama… For Truth-Telling.

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Yes, this is about… Israel/Gaza/Hamas.

Yes, Mr. Obama — and Mr. Biden — understand that this very same land and culture and religion dispute… stretches back well-over 2,300 years in this same anciently occupied, and yet generally very arid few thousand miles. Thus land disputes were and are… inevitable. And culture wars — and religious ones — hot ones.

That said, Mr. Obama sums up the complexity nicely:

…If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity, and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians must also be unbearable….

For Mirengoff, Hayward and Billingspuss (who sees fit to recall a 1984 failed Presidential bid, to make a lame point) — and as we have amply shown, Hinderaker, hisself — all of human history began on October 7 in the region. It is silly. It is sad. But that is their position.

For Messrs. Obama — and Biden — instead, the goal is not to cluck-cluck, but to try to do better. To lead. To solve, humanely as possible, mens’ grievances against their fellow men.

In sum, to seek to change the situation — so that less bloodshed ensues. But to be clear, we should all accept that no matter what anyone does, there will likely be more blood spilt in the sand.

But an ultimately non-occupied Gaza is a step toward some stability. And the US has now very directly told Israel this, as of today. That is leadership.

And that too, is a warning. These churlish ideologues above should accept that.

After last night’s nationwide election results, it is safe to say that the GOP is going to lose the US House in 2024 — and the Democratic Party will run the table. Tangerine and Trumpism will be in the rear view mirror — and/or he’ll convicted, and maybe even jailed, by then.

And THEN, in the end, without extensive US aid… Israel cannot hold out, alone. Not for very long — not decades, to be certain. So… in all likelihood by 2025 (and as of right now, in most of the EU), the deal will be tabled as follows: diminished arms and aid to Tel Aviv, henceforth, unless and until a plan for a self-governing Gaza is on the ground in Israel.

That’s tough leadership — and it is certainly imperfect (for those of us with skin in the game) but it might increase the odds of less blood in the sand.

Pretending the world started when slavery ended in the US, or when Ron Reagan took office, or when Trump did… OR when Hamas committed this terrorism… serves no legitimate interest.

It leads (as we’ve said) solely to a nation of the blind — with every man woman and child missing at least one eye — and perhaps… both of them.

So sit down, boys.

BONUS!: Testing A “Photo Shoot” Cam, NASA/SWRI’s Lucy Captures First Ever “Contact Binary” Orbiting An Asteroid — At Dinkinesh…

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This is a truly fortuitous discovery — and what comes of deciding to “test” one’s equipment, in advance of the actual main science mission. Lucy whizzed by a small object called Dinkinesh on the inner edge of the asteroid belt last week (as we mentioned) — to test its high speed cameras. The craft had detected oscillating brightness with long range cams, as it sped toward the asteroid, and so a satellite was posited.

But no one expected to see two small rocky world-lettes, essentially grinding against one another, and being held in a tight orbit around Dinkinesh. Here it all is, at right — and the story below, from Boulder’s SWRI and NASA:

…In the first downlinked images of Dinkinesh and its satellite, which were taken at closest approach, the two lobes of the contact binary happened to lie one behind the other from Lucy’s point of view. Only when the team downlinked additional images, captured in the minutes around the encounter, was the true nature of this object revealed.

“Contact binaries seem to be fairly common in the solar system,” said John Spencer, Lucy deputy project scientist, of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of the San-Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute. “We haven’t seen many up-close, and we’ve never seen one orbiting another asteroid. We’d been puzzling over odd variations in Dinkinesh’s brightness that we saw on approach, which gave us a hint that Dinkinesh might have a moon of some sort, but we never suspected anything so bizarre!”

Lucy’s primary goal is to survey the never-before-visited Jupiter Trojan asteroids….

Now you know. Lucy will now loop back toward Earth for a gravity assist speed boost — then back out to the center of the Jovian “Trojan” asteroid belt, to capture perhaps several, if not dozens, of larger objects — and beam the data back to us — in about three years. Onward, but a great bit of bonus deep space science!

नमस्ते

Even The Loony Hard Right MAGAts Agree: Mr. Kennedy Should NOT Be Allowed To “Cut In Line” — To The Supremes…

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Welp. Not surprising.

The Mizzou AG, and the Louisiana AG… don’t want to be upstaged by Mr. Kennedy’s anti-vax lunacy in the Supremes.

The states that seek to reinstate an injunction the goofy USDC Judge Doughty authored in Monroe, Louisiana on July 4 — agree that Mr. Kennedy is not needed of right — or even permissively, in the Supremes’ coming briefing and argument over whether a private actor is allowed to kick people out of his/her living room (i.e., put them off his/her private site for rules violations). They oppose his intervention at the Supremes.

The hard right has tried to recast this… but what it is, at bottom, is a claim that Ronald Reagan was wrong to end the “must carry” rules at the FCC back in about 1986.

That is — very clearly — what the hard right now seeks: a ruling that, by law, these outlets (social media) must provide equal time and equal access to all the loons out there.

About this one matter, I can now bluntly concede: Ron Reagan was right (no need for equal time for oddball views) — and by the way, those were broadcast TV networks EXPLICITLY granted monopolies — while today, there are at least 150 different social media “broadcaster platforms” of very substantial size and scope.

So, in any event, the logic of those now 50 year old and dead rules (to the extent one might agree with forcing three monopoly networks to grant TV access to allow the broadcast of minority viewpoints) — a “must carry” rule logic simply is… non-existent here in 2023. There are no monopolies.

Just ask Tangerine, hisself: he runs his truly ironically named “Truth” Social.

Damn, son. Out.

Could The “Anomalies” In Our Magnetic Fields, Under Africa, For Example — Be Explained By The Theia Theory Of The Moon’s Formation?

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A very observant Anon. commenter at our main site picked up on this weekend science story, that offers an explanation for both the formation, billions of years ago, of our Moon. . . and the modern day “uneven nature” of parts of our magnetic fields readings, in the South Pacific and a wide swath of central Africa.

This is excellent geo-science research theory, sparking additional likely insights, in other corners of the globe — presently detailed.

The notion is that a large rocky world impacted Earth billions of years ago, and sheared off what became our moon. But it now seems likely that parts of that “Theia” proto-planet were shoved deeply into our mantle, but not fully melted and mixed into our magma layer — thus high iron content shards of Theia deep under Africa and parts of the South Pacific, now make our magnetic readings… lumpy. Cool stuff, via CNN:

…If the theory is correct, it would not only provide additional details to fill out the giant-impact hypothesis but also answer a lingering question for geophysicists.

They were already aware that there are two massive, distinct blobs that are embedded deep within the Earth. The masses — called large low-velocity provinces, or LLVPs — were first detected in the 1980s. One lies beneath Africa and another below the Pacific Ocean….

These blobs are thousands of kilometers wide and likely more dense with iron compared with the surrounding mantle, making them stand out when measured by seismic waves. But the origins of the blobs — each of which are larger than the moon — remain a mystery to scientists.

But for Dr. Qian Yuan, a geophysicist and postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and the new study’s lead author, his understanding of LLVPs forever changed when he attended a 2019 seminar at Arizona State University, his alma mater, that outlined the giant-impact hypothesis….

So it goes… as I said yesterday, curiosity sparks advances in even unrelated fields, from time to time. [Earlier coverage — of the Pole’s shifts (2019), and of the “anomalies” — on the main site / blog.]

Now, go be excellent to one another. [And duly corrected, indeed — re being charitable.] Smile….

नमस्ते

After Now 4,000 Cold Nights, In A Row… On Mars: Onward — Curiosity!

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It must be said: in science, curiosity, more than almost any other virtue — is a prerequisite. Without it, science never will advance. And to be sure, each of those intervening 4,000 nights probably felt pretty bleak, at around minus 75 to minus 110 degrees… night after frigid night. But to be fair, on the peak summer days, midday might reach 60 on the plus side.

In view of all this — based on earlier 2021 data, it does look like the Martian “rocky remains” environment corresponds nicely with the ratios of organic carbon compounds we see in the geologic record, in low life-level deserts, here on Earth. Not definitive, but this is more evidence that Mars — when wetter, and blanketed by an atmosphere, billions of years ago… may have been home to… life. And we may all thank Curiosity’s 4,000 cold nights’ of duty — for that evidence.

Here’s the latest bit, on 4,000 Sols on Mars — from NASA

…Four thousand Martian days after setting its wheels in Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover remains busy conducting exciting science. The rover recently drilled its 39th sample then dropped the pulverized rock into its belly for detailed analysis.

To study whether ancient Mars had the conditions to support microbial life, the rover has been gradually ascending the base of 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) Mount Sharp, whose layers formed in different periods of Martian history and offer a record of how the planet’s climate changed over time.

The latest sample was collected from a target nicknamed “Sequoia” (all of the mission’s current science targets are named after locations in California’s Sierra Nevada). Scientists hope the sample will reveal more about how the climate and habitability of Mars evolved as this region became enriched in sulfates — minerals that likely formed in salty water that was evaporating as Mars first began drying up billions of years ago. Eventually, Mars’ liquid water disappeared for good….

Now you know — and in truth, it puts us in mind of other heady days, now eleven years on… smile.

नमस्ते