Tellingly, John Checks Trump Statement — For “Plausibility”… Damn.

July 11, 2026July 11, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

This is barely worth the time that it will take for me to dictate it… But I do want to note that Hinderaker takes several sentences here, to assess what he calls the “plausibility” of whatever the sitting president decides to write.

Imagine saying such a thing — when JFK was in the White House, or Eisenhower, or even Barack Obama.

But it is John’s concluding sentence that I most want to highlight: he makes a joke of what is purportedly a statement about an assassination threat, against Tangerine 2.0.

Note that were this serious president, there would be no jokes about assassination attempts… In this case, though nothing about this president is serious.

And John well knows it and regularly admits to it. Thus, he concludes with the joke because even he doesn’t remotely believe what Trump writes anymore.

The LINK Mission Continues To Work Checklists, Toward A Grappling With, And Then A Boosting Of… Swift’s Now Decaying Low Earth Orbit…

July 11, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

The “excess momentum” mentioned below was likely a sort of over-rotation / spin problem. Not uncommon, after such a launch. We’re glad the team got it resolved — and now will use autonomous software to keep the appropriate (Sun facing) attitude for the solar panels. [Latest prior backgrounder here.]

In any event, here’s the latest, from the associated NASA blog:

…Commissioning is well underway for Katalyst’s robotic servicing spacecraft LINK, which is designed to boost the orbit of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory….

[The team] stabilized the spacecraft after an initial period of excess momentum and enabled autonomous momentum management. Katalyst is now checking out LINK’s subsystems, including its electric propulsion system, which involves firing the spacecraft’s three xenon-fueled thrusters….

The commissioning process is anticipated to take a few weeks, with flexibility built in to allow the team to pause, assess data, and adjust as needed. After the commissioning phase, LINK will begin its journey to meet and rendezvous with Swift….

Now you know — close up cabaret magic again, tonight — downtown. Smile… after hearing Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, live last night in the park — with fireworks, after.

नमस्ते

Harrowing Models Suggest The Actual Ebola Figures In Ituri Province, DRC Are Double- To Quadruple-… The Confirmed Number Of Cases — And Deaths.

July 10, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

As we’d said over eight weeks ago, the numbers are certainly much worse than the tested, official case counts.

Here’s the latest — but especially in Ituri, the rates of new cases — with no traced contact to any other — suggests this will be a very long-tail outbreak. Yikes:

…Four out of every five new Ebola cases in parts of Democratic Republic of Congo have no known link to existing patients, a ‌senior World Health Organization official said, warning that the true scale of the outbreak could be two to four times larger than official data suggest.

The figures underscore the challenges facing health workers as they battle to contain the outbreak in the country’s northeast, which has so far [by confirmed, tested cases] infected 1,792 people and killed 625, according to government data released on Thursday….

WHO estimates based on modelling and test positivity rates suggest the outbreak, which was declared in mid-May, may be between two and four times larger than the number of confirmed cases, he said.

About 90% of all reported cases remain concentrated in Ituri province, particularly in the health zones of Bunia, Rwampara, Mongbwalu and Nyakunde, where transmission remains intense….

And as we previously said… this is a Musk/Trumpian legacy, too. They gutted USAID, when it was most needed.

नमस्ते

Solely For A Complete Record, Of Trumpian Malevolence…

July 10, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

At the 11^th hour, Tangerine 2.0 forces filed an again largely non-responsive answer, in the Second Circuit.

I won’t quote it — but simply note that it makes multiple misstatements as to the record, ignores the government’s own nearly two years of delay now — and then offers legal arguments that have already been rejected in both Nashville and Maryland. Damn.

It will fail.

And — most of all — we must mention that overnight in Houston, yet another likely innocent (non-deportable) man lies dead — shot down by what appears to be overly-aggressive ICE/DHS agent lawlessness. [Witnesses report that at least one of the ICE agents involved exited his vehicle and immediately started shooting.] Damn.

The indictments ought to come from state prosecutors, but this is MAGA Greg Abbott’s Texas. So, we will have to wait — and see.

Separately, I am off to the Rockies for all of next week, so blogging is forecast to be light to non-existent. Smile….

नमस्ते

New Horizons Is Back Online, Some 6 Billion Miles Off, And Now Into The Deep Kuiper Belt…

July 10, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

You may recall that we’ve covered this mission since 2015. It is truly an ongoing wonder — but its signature feat, was the sharpest ever color images — of tiny Pluto — revealing a heart-shaped formation, back then — covering almost a third of the face of that icy orbiter.

Here’s the latest on all that, from the Johns-Hopkins APL | NASA teams:

…On June 23, flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, confirmed New Horizons, acting on stored commands uplinked to its main computer last July, had safely awakened from a 321‑day hibernation period that began Aug. 7. With the spacecraft now approximately 5.9 billion miles (9.5 billion kilometers) from Earth, the radio signals carrying that confirmation took about 8 hours and 52 minutes to reach the APL Mission Operations Center via NASA’s Deep Space Network station near Madrid, Spain….

The mission team typically places New Horizons in resource‑saving hibernation mode during long cruise periods. While the spacecraft is hibernating, operators do not send commands or retrieve data, but the spacecraft continues gathering and storing data around the clock from its heliospheric plasma sensors, Solar Wind at Pluto and the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation, as well as its space dust detector, the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter….

As New Horizons resumes active operations, Bowman noted, the team will begin downlinking spacecraft health and safety data, followed by data from the three scientific instruments.

In about three weeks, the spacecraft’s onboard Alice ultraviolet spectrograph will look at the hydrogen gas distribution in the outer heliosphere, while the Solar Wind at Pluto, the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation, and the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter instruments continue their measurements, and the ground team conducts a series of spacecraft and instrument checkouts….

Smiling into a warm sunny mid-summer’s Friday,now….

नमस्ते

Tangent Pt. II: An Interesting (Expert’s) Perspective, On Mr. Nolan’s Casting Decision(s)…

July 10, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

This is now the second time we’ve mentioned this particular — largely imaginary — but MAGA agitprop propelled “controversy”. Folks, most serious scholars of ancient / classic Greek literature will immediately point out that the Helen of Troy in these tales is certainly… mostly mythical, not in any sense a historical / flesh and blood woman.

So — it seems both silly, and racist — to complain here about skin color.

That continues to be my view, but I commend to the readership this opinion piece — from a bona fide scholar — on the subject of Greek lit & mythology. This essay appears in the coming morning’s NYT — and should be read closely, word for word. . . but the below resonated deeply, for me [when thinking of Mr. Nolan’s decision(s), here]:

…[T]he woman whom we associate with great beauty was, at least for the Greeks, all talk. Both a skilled orator and the object of skillful oratory, the “real” Helen of Troy, you could argue, was a figure associated above all with profound debates about the nature of reality and the power of words, the seductiveness of falsehood and the fragility of truth.

In that sense, at least, the controversy about the new “Odyssey” movie, like so many of the arguments being conducted today, connects us to the Greeks’ Helen in a far more authentic way than the choice of this or that actress could….

Indeed. I will certainly favor the movie — by actually purchasing a ticket — even if I already know Matt Damon chews up every scene he’s in (in the way the official trailer makes plain).

So, as irony would have it, perhaps it is the aging whyte guy… who’s been poorly cast. Heh. Imagine that!

नमस्ते

We’re Overdue — For An Update, On Amazon [& Mr. Bezos’] Abuse Of The US Workers’ Rights To Organize — Under The NLRA…

July 10, 2026July 10, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

We had frankly (albeit inadvertently) let this narrative arc fall off the radar-screen, in the prior four months. That was our bad. [Here is one of about of my 30 prior posts, on Amazon labor tactics, over the last eight or so years.]

But once again, it seems that Mr. Bezos’stock-in-trade is to skirt the law, at best — and abuse the rights of his labor forces, to organize collectively — at worst. Here’s the latest, from the NLRB.Edge blog:

…The Board [of the NLRB] has affirmed an administrative law judge’s findings that Amazon committed a series of violations of the NLRA during the Amazon Labor Union’s 2021 organizing campaign at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island, while dismissing one allegation involving the discharge of an employee at a nearby delivery station.

The Board upheld findings that contracted security guards acted as Amazon’s agents when they told an employee he needed permission to distribute union literature, confiscated the literature, and photographed his badge to report him to human resources.

In a separate incident about a week later, another security guard created the impression that employees’ union activities were under surveillance by pointing a phone at organizers and workers during a union event. The Board also affirmed that Amazon violated the law in June 2021 when a manager and a human resources employee separately told employees they could not hand out union literature on their own time in nonwork areas and confiscated the literature, and when another human resources employee did the same later that day….

Now you know — with close-up cabaret magic shows — like the 1920s (post-war) in the Loop, on tap, for tomorrow night. Grin….

नमस्ते

ESA’s Euclid Spies Oldest Quasars In The Known Universe: New YouTube Video…

July 9, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

The universe as we know it was only about six per cent of its present age.

A mere baby — with very chaotic quasars generating unimaginably vast light blasts, which helped form the later generations of stars and galaxies… and yes, planetary systems — like our own. Here’s the story — and video, of Euclid’s latest ground-breaking learnings:

…Quasars represent a brief phase in a galaxy’s life during which large amounts of material spiral into the central supermassive black hole, releasing enormous amounts of energy. In this phase, the galaxy’s nucleus shines more brightly than anything else in the Universe, often outshining the rest of its host galaxy by hundreds to thousands of times.

We’ve been hunting for the Universe’s very first quasars for decades. These objects reveal what was happening during the earliest days of the cosmos, including how the first supermassive black holes and galaxies took shape. However, quasars from this time are difficult to find. They’re rare, as few galaxies had yet had time to grow big enough, and their primordial light is both faint and easy to confuse with that from stars lying closer to us.

Euclid, launched in 2023, is digging deeper into this mystifying part of ancient cosmic history – with exciting results. The telescope has now discovered an unprecedented number of 31 new quasars in the early Universe, pushing back to a time when the cosmos was just about 6% of its current age….

13 billion light years away… that’s quite a separation — in both space, and time. Smile.

नमस्ते

Again, Abrego Has The Better Argument: In Maryland Federal Court, He May Depose DHS And ICE Agents, Now… Why Exactly Was He Grabbed?!

July 9, 2026 ~ condor ~ Leave a comment

We all know where this one is headed. We have told you repeatedly: Mr. Abrego Garcia will win damages from Tangerine 2.0, and his feckless agencies’ heads. And he will choose where he will live, as a free man, with his family — next.

He will soon be a millionaire, due to Trumpian malfeasance. But it will come from taxpayer coffers. Charming. Here is a bit of the latest clearly correct — and powerful — argument:

…In opposing Petitioner Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s request to conduct limited discovery, the Government continues to pursue arguments that this Court has rejected time and again. To accept the Government’s arguments, one must disregard nearly all of the Court’s prior rulings here and in Abrego Garcia v. Noem, No. 25-cv-00951 (“Abrego Garcia I”). Although doing so allows the Government to feign ignorance of its prior conduct, it does not rewrite the record or Abrego Garcia’s showing of good cause that warrants limited discovery here. The Court should grant Abrego Garcia’s motion.

As the Court recognized at the May 12 hearing, three claims are ripe for resolution: Count One (that the Government’s disregard of Abrego Garcia’s designation of Costa Rica violates 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(2)), Count Three (that the Government’s efforts to remove Abrego Garcia elsewhere violates due process), and Count Four (that the Government’s efforts to remove Abrego Garcia elsewhere violates § 1231(b)(3) and 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16). ECF No. 176 at 8:8–9:4….

[T]he Government [argues again] that Abrego Garcia’s claims are jurisdictionally barred by U.S.C. § 1252(a)(5), (b)(9) and (g). The Government first raised these arguments back in April 2025. This Court, and the Fourth Circuit, have repeatedly rejected them because he is not challenging the Attorney General’s exercise of lawful discretion to commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders. See ECF No. 110 at 15–17; Abrego Garcia I, ECF No. 31 at 7–16; Abrego Garcia I, ECF No. 238 at 12–14; Abrego Garcia v. Noem, 2025 WL 1021113, at *2–3 (4th Cir. Apr. 7, 2025) (Thacker, J., concurring). The Government has persisted in advancing this position, including at ECF Nos. 28, 72, 115, 142, 159, 160, 170, 184. Here, again, Abrego Garcia respectfully requests that the Court deem his prior responses, including at ECF Nos. 32, 88, 118, 144, incorporated here by reference….

The Government also argues that habeas corpus is not the proper vehicle for Counts One, Three, and Four. See ECF 181 (“Opp.”) 7–8, 11–12. That is wrong. These claims challenge unlawful non-discretionary actions by the Government—such as its disregard of § 1231 and due process — in its pursuit of Abrego Garcia’s immigration confinement and removal. Such claims sound in habeas because they necessarily imply the invalidity of the Government’s efforts to place Abrego Garcia in immigration detention and remove him to Liberia or other third countries. See Trump v. J.G.G., 604 U.S. 670, 671–73 (2025) (holding that challenges to removal under the Alien Enemies Act must be brought in habeas because they necessarily imply the invalidity of confinement and removal under that Act); see also id. at 674 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“[G]oing back to the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, if not earlier, habeas corpus has been the proper vehicle for detainees to bring claims seeking to bar their transfers.”).

Abrego Garcia may therefore take discovery on a showing of “good cause” — i.e., “a specific allegation that shows reason to believe that [he] may be able to demonstrate that he is entitled to relief.” Quesinberry v. Taylor, 162 F.3d 273, 279 (4th Cir. 1998); see Bracy v. Gramley, 520 U.S. 899, 904 (1997); Juniper v. Zook, 876 F.3d 551, 572 n.9 (4th Cir. 2017); Habeas Rule 6(a)….

Onward, resolutely.

नमस्ते