Debt Service Redux

In a new service to their readership, the Times front pages Tomorrow's News Today: a debt ceiling crunch is approaching in late October/early November and Washington "leadership" may remain dysfunctional.

Well, OK. I'll add that to my list of worries but it won't crack the Top Ten for a while.

Comments

[JM Hanes]

They must be really hurting for bad news.

[henry]

uniparty times it that way to get extra spending locked in before the election. business as usual.

[D]

JMH:
Agreed.
President Trump and Melanie are a big hit over in Great Britain and there is nothing they can do about it.

[JM Hanes]

Perhaps this would be a good time to turn our forensic attention to all the various folks committing real Logan Act violations. I do not think this is a casual effort, I think it is a coordinated attack on. If folks are telling China, Iran, Ukraine etc to wait out Donald Trump's term, who are they telling them to wait for in the crowd of clowns running for the White House? Is Team Obama/Jarrett assuring the global community that they have the wherewithal to be pulling the Democrat strings no matter who is elected? Considering how thoroughly they subverted the Executive branch, it's not an implausible claim. If Jarrett's profile is so low as to be almost invisible, perhaps that's because the Obama crowd has moved on from domestic to international politics. Has U.S. has proved too small a pond?

[Jane]

I just spent $20.00 on eels.

If you didn't think I was crazy before, please reconsider.

[Another Bob]

Concur JMH. Almost as if they’re running a shadow government already.

[henry]

was your hovercraft empty?

[JM Hanes]

John H:

"“Don’t tell mom”." (from the conversation on dangerous toys)

I laughed so hard when I read that! Actually, it was more like hearing an echo du temps perdu.

[Captain Hate]

I'm recopying AB's link (even though I generally hate the Forbes site) just because it can't be overstated how much popular culture politicizes everything and always in one direction. I remembered when Chernobyl happened and thinking "this is gonna create a huge dead zone forever and a day", at least for my lifetime. Then a few years later I started hearing about activity around there and thinking WTF. It's all lies.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/09/the-reason-they-fictionalize-nuclear-disasters-like-chernobyl-is-because-they-kill-so-few-people/

[JM Hanes]

Who all is involved so far that we know of? Kerry and Jarrett are obvious Iran connections. Do we have DiFi talking directly to the Chinese? There's the former Ambassador to Ukraine, telling the (former?) gov't that Trump won't last. Who else?

[henry]

JMH, we have DiFi with Iran's foreign minister on her cell phone.

[JM Hanes]

henry:

Right, so that ties her into the Jarrett/Kerry cabal, no? Who else is included in the Iranian foreign minister's rounds?

For some reason, I think this is bigger than Iran alone. Of course, the Clintons were tight with the Chinese and the 'Stans, but I tend to think of them as a spent force at this point, perhaps erroneously though. They've still got a lot of money, and know where a lot more is buried.

[James D.]

Almost as if they’re running a shadow government already.

I'd take "almost" out of that sentence.

[JM Hanes]

I wonder how much of the State Dept is under Pompeo''s control.

[henry]

JMH, Iran supplies China with oil... are they also a proxy for "silk Road" activities realated to creating instability for China to exploit?

[fdcol63 🇺🇸]

" .. .There's the former Ambassador to Ukraine, telling the (former?) gov't that Trump won't last. ..."

They're right. Trump won't last ..... beyond a possible 2nd term, anyway.

It's a feature, not a bug, that we don't have permanent dictators. Our POTUSes come and go.

But what used to be fairly consistent was the respect of the rule of law, obedience to the US Constitution, US policy and national defense objectives.

Sure, they may have varied a little between administrations, but I think they were a lot more consistent than they are now.

As far as I can remember, Carter was the first to radically deviate from this posture, and it seems to have gotten worse with every successive Dem administration.

And then Obama REALLY destroyed this with his international "apology" tour that won him his Nobel Peace Prize.

[Another Bob]

“I wonder how much of the State Dept is under Pompeo''s control.”

However much it is, it isn’t enough.

I start worrying about DOD and CIA as well.

[JM Hanes]

That would make sense, henry. What with the sanctions imposed on Iran from the west, China can probably make some pretty good deals. Much of their world wide activity for almost as long as I can remember, centered around leverage their influence and locking up oil producing territories.

I'm trying to remember where I just read an article about China's "One belt, one road" being use to capture countries with big loans -- now being adversely affected as the U.S. actions & Chinese economic overreach make it look like a belt tightening moment.

And of course the nuclear highway between Iran and No. Korea must basically go through China, although I'm not sure the Chinese are entirely in control of NoKo.

[Jane]

"Almost as if they’re running a shadow government already."

To take over the whole world, or just our country?

[Jane]

That's a serious question, BTW.

[Jim Eagle]

Regarding Chernobyl, Professor Lawerence Weinstein, PHd. (Nuclear Physics MIT) explains the real Chernobyl, not the one made up by people who don't know the difference between hot and cold:)

Chernobyl

* The worst reactor accident was on April 26, 1986 at Chernobyl, which was not a Western light-water reactor. It was a graphite-moderated and water-cooled reactor, so there was water in vertical metal pipes passing through the core, and the water absorbed the heat and boiled.

* It was an RBMK-1000 reactor, generating 1000 megawatts of electricity. There were 4 operating at the Chernobyl site, and 2 more were under construction. Unit 4 had just been built in 1983, and units 1 and 3 continued operation until 1996 and 2000, respectively. They operated on natural uranium because they didn’t need to enrich the uranium with a graphite moderator. This is similar to Fermi’s original reactor, which he built in Chicago by piling up graphite and uranium.

* This reactor was optimized for plutonium production for bombs, which meant that the fuel rods could be swapped into and out of the reactor while it was running. This is similar to the reactors in the United States that were built to make plutonium. We want plutonium-239 with
as little other plutonium isotopes as possible, which means that we want to remove the fuel rods and extract the plutonium after some plutonium-239 has been made, but before it can absorb another neutron and make plutonium-240.

* Chernobyl had some design issues. It was much bigger than the submarine-influenced light-water reactor designs in the United States and was too large for a convenient containment structure. The core was 46 feet in diameter and 23 feet high, and 12-foot-long fuel rods were inserted vertically.

* The moderation was mostly done by carbon. The cooling water could do a little moderation, but it mostly absorbed neutrons. If the amount of water decreased, then there was a little less moderation, which
is negative feedback, and less neutron absorption, which is positive feedback. Chernobyl had net positive feedback—which is very bad.

* There was also a control rod design defect. The control rods were removed by lifting them upward. To keep the water from filling the control rod channel (and also from absorbing neutrons), a graphite displacer was attached. But there was about 1.25 meters, or 4 feet, of water at the bottom of the control rod channels. Inserting the control rod initially replaced the water with carbon, and that initially makes things worse. In addition, the
rods moved much more slowly than needed—18 seconds to insert.

* The safety test went wrong. They planned
to test the function of the pump during
loss of power, so they reduced the power,
but they overshot. The buildup of xenon (fuel poison) caused the operators to remove 205 out of 211 control rods. They ignored the unexpected conditions and continued the test.

* The test reduced steam flow to the turbine, which decreased the
water flow in the reactor, which meant more boiling, less water, and more reactivity—positive feedback. This led to an increase of control rods, which made things worse, increasing the reactivity to prompt supercritical. This means that the timescale for the exponential increase of the reactivity was very short. If there was a sharp increase in power output, it might have hit 30 gigawatts. It’s not entirely clear what happened next.

* Within about 20 seconds, there were 2 explosions. The first was a steam explosion, which exposed the reactor fuel to air. The second was either a chemical explosion between the reactor material and the air or runaway reactor criticality, which is like a very-low-yield nuclear bomb. These explosions started fires.

*The big tanks of water under the reactor turned to steam and exploded, blowing the 500-ton reactor cap off. Then, there was a hydrogen explosion and fire, and the core and radioactive debris—and the
fission products in the core—were widely dispersed. Most of these are volatile nuclides.

* Firefighters weren’t told what they were fighting. Water doesn’t put out graphite fires. Eventually, they figured it out and dumped a lot of sand, lead, and boron, etc., from helicopters.

* No announcement was made. About 2 days later, in Sweden and Finland, radiation alarms started going off and the radiation alarm at a Swedish nuclear power plant went off because radioactive contamination was tracked in on a plant worker’s shoes.

* There were about 50 tons of vaporized uranium. That wasn’t a problem; the uranium is not significantly radioactive. But there was a plume of other material, including noble gases, such as krypton-85 and xenon-133; 48 megacuries of iodine-131 (which can damage the thyroid gland), with a half-life of 8 days; 1.5 megacuries of cesium-134, with a 2-year half-life; 2.3 megacuries of cesium-137, with a 30-year half-life; and 0.3 megacuries of strontium-90 (which, like radon, seeks bone), also with a 30-year half-life. This airborne plume of material fell to ground—which is why it’s called fallout—across Europe.

*About 130 plant workers and firefighters came down with acute radiation syndrome, and 30 of them died from the radiation exposure. There was population exposure from ingestion and ground exposure. The linear no-threshold hypothesis predicted about 9000 excess cancer fatalities.

* About 300,000 people were evacuated. There were several thousand measurable extra thyroid cancers due to iodine-131, which amounted to about 15 extra deaths from thyroid cancer.

* Significant areas of the Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia were contaminated with about 5 curies or more per square kilometer. For a 100-kilogram person, this equates to an external dose of 6 × 10−4 joules per kilogram in a year, which is a dose of 60 millirem in a year. Our background radiation dose is 600 millirem, so this contamination was relatively small.

* This predicted a 70-year population exposure of 600,000 person-sieverts, or 60 million person-rem. In the first year, this increased the average radiation dose in non-former-Soviet Union Europe by about 8%. If we apply the linear no-threshold hypothesis, this predicts 9000 extra cancer deaths over 70 years—out of100 million natural cancers.

* Twenty years after the accident, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation said that except for thyroid cancer, there was no evidence of a major public health impact caused by radiation exposure. (Thyroid cancers are otherwise very rare, so it’s much easier to identify extra thyroid cancers than extra other kinds of cancer.)

* Today, there’s a new, very expensive dome enclosing the reactor. They didn’t think they needed it before the accident. You can tour the contamination zone.

[Marlene]

Jane,are the eels Maine eels? The 2019 baby eel harvest brought in $20M!

[fdcol63 🇺🇸]

Jane,

Both. Destroy the US, and it makes it easier for the globalist socialists to conquer the rest.

[Jim Eagle]

Weinstein is at Old Dominion University know. He used to be on the same job at Penn State. That is a transcript from his Great Courses lecture on Nuclear Physics which I watched as a refresher course about 2 years ago when I was doing some off the record consulting. No, not in core or fuel design but transportation and security, silly:)

He is great to watch and listen to his subject matter. Highly recommend the full course.

[Jim Eagle]

Jane, I'll see if I can find my MIL's Belgium recipe for Eel. They would go to 3 or 4 fishmongers in order to find the perfect Eel for dinner. I would say the Belgians and Dutch eat at least 4-6 dinners a year on fresh Eel. Me? Once is enough.

[Jim Eagle]

Hey! So, Trump is announcing his 2020 bid in Orlando on June 14th. Flag Day and also his Birthday. How about those red apples?

[Marlene]

We watched Chernobyl at the daughter's the evening before we drove to NC. The workers and firefighters who were on the front lines and received the full radiation exposure are depicted in a very graphic way in the hospital scenes. What away to die. Many of the actors are Brit actors you will recognize if you watch the show. They portray the fear,helplessness and horror as events unfold very well.

[Marlene]

*a way* The hospital in Moscow is depicted as just awful. I wouldn't let my dog in there!

[henry]

The hospital in Moscow is depicted as just awful

lots of British actors? They had to make it look worse than NHS.

[fdcol63 🇺🇸]

I kinda like this shirt:

https://comfytshirt.com/products/ethnic-floral-print-shirt?fbclid=IwAR2GfnWvI7_wB29O4OXX4B67frVvSftJ6nhuWOLH6NOQorOgMo9lXKe0lro

But it's described as "ethnic floral print". Does that mean if a white guy wears it, he'll be accused of "cultural appropriation"?

Sad that I have to worry about stuff like this today, and sad that some SJW corporate execs (like that female Gillette exec) believe it is now their duty to challenge "toxic masculinity" and advance their Leftist agenda, while destroying company sales and profits.

[Marlene]

Ha,henry.

[Jim Eagle]

If anyone is interested in Prof. Weinstein's remarks on Fukushima, just let me know and I will post it or send via email.

[JM Hanes]

Jane:

"To take over the whole world, or just our country?"

It's a very interesting question, too. During his first term, I think Obama's foreign policy was defined almost exclusively in terms of how it would affect his domestic ambitions (retreat from Iraq, etc). Jarrett was surely directing anything related to Iran, which of course, was a major beneficiary of our withdrawal next door.

By his second term Obama had a list of "legacy" themed items he wanted to tick off, but I think he had also developed a taste for the international stage. The Iran "treaty" and the climate change "accord" were his entree to global leadership. I'm not sure how American he ever really considered himself. It was more like a suit he chose to put on in the morning.

[JM Hanes]

Jack:

Thanks for that primer on nuclear reactors. I knew a lot less about them than I thought I did. I also didn't realize there were such substantial differences amongst them.

[Melinda]

Pebble Bed!!!

[MissMarple2]

BIG NEWS!!!!

Donald J. Trump
‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump
2h2 hours ago

Russia has informed us that they have removed most of their people from Venezuela.

[MissMarple2]

Donald J. Trump
‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump
1h1 hour ago

As a sign of good faith, Mexico should immediately stop the flow of people and drugs through their country and to our Southern Border. They can do it if they want!

[Jim Eagle]

JMH,

Frederick has a Thorium Reactor in our garage in Florida. Talk about different:)

Seriously, I have been on both BWR and PWR projects as well as in a management oversight role on Fast Flux Reactor project. But basically, here in the US, it is either Boiling Water Reactor (Fukushima and GE's bailiwick) or Pressurized Water Reactors (i.e TMI and Combustion Engineering and Westinghouse products).

I loved every day of my Nuclear experience, although shortlived for Civil and Infrastructure.

[Another Bob]

Marlene, that opening scene was not factually accurate. Read the link Captain Hate posted above.

[Jim Eagle]

Mel,

Hah! Pebble Bed. As long as a pebble doesn't get stuck as it did on AVR in Germany:)

[Jane]

Re: the eels. I got them on Amazon so I have no idea where they are from. I had a dish at a sushi place that blew my mind. I went to get it at takeout and asked what was in the carrot slaw - which was amazing, she told me, and gave me a bit of hot sauce and eels. (they put eels in all of their dishes. So I made carrot and zucchini slaw and added fresh ginger, eels and hot sauce and it was AMAZING. So then I needed more eel and found it on Amazon. Hope it doesn’t sit in the fridge for 20 years.

[Another Bob]

Jack, I worked in controls design for PWRs and Russian VVERs (which are also PWRs).

[Marlene]

Yes AB,artistic license. The young woman who touched her radiation exposed husband had just found out she was pregnant. As we watched,the daughter and I made lame jokes about glow in the dark babies. :)

[Another Bob]

Oh, and did you have the fun of pulling RWPs and dressing out appropriately? (I still remember the class ;) )

[Jane]

JMH,

To me it doesn’t make sense that it’s not a worldwide plan. First because hopefully they are totally screwed in the US. And the countries he is aligning with are all anti-US.

History would get very interesting info the USA went to war against Barack Obama.

[Jane]

‘If” not info.

[MissMarple2]

Mark Meadows
‏Verified account @RepMarkMeadows
16m16 minutes ago

We have a host of things we could be doing to help families across America... but thank goodness the Democrats are calling 'Watergate Star' John Dean to testify. Yet another openly desperate move to resuscitate a dead collusion conspiracy.

This is not serious.
=======================
Mark Meadows weas replying to this guy from Politico:

Kyle Cheney
‏Verified account @kyledcheney

NEWS: The House Judiciary Committee will call Watergate Star JOHN DEAN and former prosecutors next week as part of a push to shift focus to the substance of the Mueller report.

[Jim Eagle]

AB,

LOL. VVER. I think the Russkies even have one under construction in Bangladesh. Most sold to iron curtain domains IIRC. I am sure they pirated a lot of CE and Westinghouse to get that close.

[Tom R]

John Dean? LOL at House Democrats.

Inaction speaks louder than words. There has to be some reason both the House Democrats and Senate GOP are refusing to have Mueller testify.

[Jim Eagle]

I never thought about this but it is the kind of scenario that is out of the box or beyond the envelope thinking requires:

We don't rebel but Obama and his bots do and try to take us over. A hard coup, or even a leftwing insurrection led by Eric Swalwell and a 100K diaper warriors. Followed up by Lena Dunham and her Tattoo army of Fat Bitches, some on bikes, most on lawn mowers. Finally, we are crushed by Michelle Obama and her book throwing biography warriors.

The more I think about it the more I am going back to Florida and relax on the beach.

[JM Hanes]

MM:

I read elsewhere that the Russians basically couldn't afford to keep them there any longer, as it was rapidly turning into a pro bono effort. Too bad the $$ didn't run out a month earlier. The WSJ article Narciso (?) posted, made it all sound like quite a tangle:

In a Blow to Maduro, Russia Withdraws Key Defense Support to Venezuela.

Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow’s defense exports have become a foreign-policy tool. The arms trade is overseen in some places by embassy employees themselves to help strengthen ties with political partners from Asia to South America, according to one of the people familiar with the situation. The defense contractor, run by Mr. Putin’s longtime friend Sergei Chemezov, has been hit by financial difficulties as U.S. sanctions have derailed several big contracts.

A person close to the Russian government said Rostec weighed the political benefits of supporting Mr. Maduro against the regime’s growing economic liabilities, forcing the company to make a strategic decision on ties with Caracas.

“They believe the fight is being lost,” said the person.

At least it seems that sanctions & major trading adjustments have begun to have some visible effects at a global level -- perhaps because this administration is actually playing serious hardball instead of just talking tough? I'm not sure how it all works, but I do have a sense of some major shifts going on. What do you guys think? And do you think the changes will be substantive enough to last? If we can give Trump another 4 years, I think we may well see a rather different world order emerging. I also think Trump's successes may be providing encouragement to others.

If the WSJ article is behind the paywall for others here, I can post some more excerpts, because it's pretty interesting. The article suggested that the Russians are, however, trying to maintain something of a military presence there, and notes that "there is no easy way for Rosneft to divest itself of its commitments, which have mostly been spent on prepayment for Venezuelan oil or joint-venture costs with Venezuela’s state oil company." I'll be interested in finding out more about who is leaving and who is not.

[Neo]

In a city overrun by lawyers, the Democrats go for the guy who lost his license.
http://www.vsb.org/attorney/searchResults.asp?firstname=john&lastname=dean&search=D&type=D&submit=Search

[Jim Eagle]

AB,

Remember the first lesson in RWP is to wash your hands first before you pee.

[Old Lurker]

A-Bob "I start worrying about DOD and CIA as well."

Surely you recall the discussion just after the election regarding having enough Deep Staters in the DoD chain of command to prevent Trump from ordering a nuclear action.

That was a deadly serious discussion.

As to the CIA, two words: John Brennan.

[Narciso79]

I'm not worrying about it, yet, marmalard leading an attack, hes likely to kicked by his horse

[JM Hanes]

JiB:

Sounds like just about every dystopian fantasy film ever made, doesn't it. If I had a beach, that's where I'd be headed too!

Maybe I need to move to somewhere on the water too.

[Narciso79]

Hemezov is more oligarch then siloviki he used to rum the arms export bureaucracy

[Buckeye]

Jack

Where did Babcock and Wilcox fit in the Nuke picture?

I think I mentioned in the past building and inspection robot/system for them.

[Jim Eagle]

OL,

Welcome back. The Ledge misses you especially your vault of Grey Goose:) But we survive on Tito's, Ketel One and Absolut.

JMH,

Also, Russia doesn't have the technology to help them refine their tar viscosity crude. Only we have that:) Sooner or later they will come around . Oil makes friends and enemies but mostly both with money.

[Captain Hate]

Thanks for that primer on nuclear reactors. I knew a lot less about them than I thought I did. I also didn't realize there were such substantial differences amongst them.

There was a lot of disinformation being tossed about during Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. I remember reading some MFM account that described the Rooski reactor as liquid metal cooled and I thought WTF. And don't get me started on the China Syndrome.

[MJW]

Tom R.: It's plausible speculation but there is also the possibility that Mueller or Rosenstein is who gave Barr the information on Weissman's interpretation of § 1512(c)(2). Both of them knew what Weissman was trying to do so they possessed the same inside knowledge that Trump's lawyers did.

You are aware, I assume, that Weissman worked under Mueller and Rosenstein, not the other way around, so if they wanted to shut him down, they didn't need to go behind his back to do it.

[Narciso79]

They sank a whole lot of cash into pdvsa with little to show for it.

[Buckeye]

History would get very interesting in the USA went to war against Barack Obama.

Mitch Rapp can deal with it:)

[MissMarple2]

Amb. Grenell and Rabbi Teichtal walk the streets of #Charlottenburg and proudly wear #kippahs. Religious freedom is crucial to free societies. pic.twitter.com/esTW76pKiA

— US-Botschaft Berlin (@usbotschaft) June 3, 2019

==============

Richard Grenell, the ambassador, comments about this story:

Richard Grenell
‏Verified account @RichardGrenell
8h8 hours ago

We are not afraid. We are proud.

[Davod]

Re. Barr's earlier refutation of Mueller's approach to obstruction of justice. Barr may well have seen Mueller, or some of his people use the argument in the past.

[Captain Hate]

John Dean's a convicted felon who was disbarred. Can't they find a single untainted "expert"?

[Narciso79]

It's like the story of the junior scientist at trinity that got radiation poisoning?
https://rostec.ru/en/about/controls/sergey_chemezov/

[MJW]

As I pointed out when the Human Events article was first discussed, it's nearly impossible to believe that during Barr's confirmation hearing, the Democrats didn't pursue in great detail the circumstances under which Barr wrote his memo on obstruction. Perhaps Barr didn't speak literally (that is, lied) about whether he was provided information or encouragement to write it by Trump's lawyers, but I very much doubt he'd do that.

[MissMarple2]

State Dinner photo!!!

If you want to see the whole photo, either right click or click here:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8KW9DsWkAADp3J.jpg

That way you can see Charles and Camilla, too!

[Captain Hate]

Barr may well have seen Mueller, or some of his people use the argument in the past.

Weissmann used it to destroy Arthur Anderson in the Enron case, subsequently reversed by the Supreme Court 9-0(!) after the damage was done.

[Jim Eagle]

Buckeye,

I was remiss in not mentioning B&W. You are right, they were a pioneer in the Nautilus and Shippingport. Now mostly in the DOE advanced business and DoD propulsion slot. I think there are several IOU reactors out there but my mind is not that good to remember.

Best coal-fired boilers in the world IMHO.

[MissMarple2]

https://twitter.com/breakingweather/status/1135637446153199621

Accuweather predicting PATCHY FROST in the Northeast! Map at the link.

[Jim Eagle]

And who strikes you first in that photo? Only if you full size it.

Melania. If she doesn't make the UK press drool over her, who can?

[MJW]

There were plenty of rumors around the time Barr wrote his memo that Mueller was concentrating on obstruction, related to such matters as Comey's firing. The only way that could happen is with a very broad interpretation of the obstruction statue's catch-all provision. Weissman was well known for advancing such interpretations of obstruction, in the Arthur Anderson case, and others. Any smart lawyer could guess where Mueller was headed, and Barr is a very smart lawyer.

[D]

Clinton lost his law license for awhile.
Dean lost his.
Weissman is unscrupulous and cant be trusted.
It appears most of these Dems don’t understand real justice as they abuse the law to reach their own ends.

[fdcol63 🇺🇸]

Is Charles the longest serving Prince of Wales in history?

He probably thinks, "Any day, now! Surely!"

[Captain Hate]

Miss Marple & Buckeye,

Was it unseasonably cold out your way this morning? It was in the 40s here.

[MissMarple2]

Momto2!

I missed this dress she wore for the departure!

https://truepundit.com/photos-melania-trump-pays-homage-to-london-in-gucci-for-u-k-trip/

It's a London print!

[Narciso79]

George the 5th, was one for about 40 years.

[D]

MJW:
That is so true.
Obstruction was never going to be proved .President Trump is allowed to fire any person he wants to in his administration.
Mueller, Comey Clapper, Brennan andMcCabe and Strzok all broke the law by spying and trying to reverse an election.
Loretta Lynch and Rice and Powers-along with Yates also need to be questioned under oath.
Watch many of them try to take the Fifth.

[fdcol63 🇺🇸]

Charles became PoW (pun, not intended, but maybe apropos! LOL) on 26 July 1958 .... almost 61 years ago.

[Another Bob]

So far as I know Jack, the Russians didn’t steal much for the VVER. The Russkies weren’t stupid about nuke stuff. Their construction quality? Different story.

We did have to track down the Russian designers for questions. An uncomfortable number of them were Moscow cab drivers.

[MissMarple2]

Captain Hate,

It was in the low 50's and is supposed to get down to 47 tonight. We turned off the SC last night and I am wearing a long sleeve knit shirt with a hooded sweatshirt jacket, because I am darn chilly.

On top of that, rain is supposed to move in tomorrow.

[MissMarple2]

I meant the AC, of course.

[MissMarple2]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-02/major-russian-defense-contractor-exits-venezuela-huge-blow-maduro

[Tom R]

MJW @ 4:06

You are aware, I assume, of the backlash that would occur if anyone from Team Trump formally tried to shut down any aspect of the Mueller SC? Weissman would have immediately leaked to the media that Rosenstein/Mueller were not allowing him to conduct a thorough investigation. The Democrats would have been given the ammunition to promote a "cover up" narrative as well as legit OOJ allegations if anyone tried to thwart Weissman.

To avoid giving Democrats that ammunition IMO Rosenstein or Mueller (or both) provided Barr with the inside knowledge of Weissman's intent so that the DOJ would be prepared to counter it when the report was officially released. The analysis of Barr's memo to Rosenstein is that it is a 100% point by point refutation of Weissman's OOJ theory. Maybe Barr could have pieced together what Weissman was wanting to do from info provided by Trump lawyers or reviewing the Arthur Anderson case but what is the likelihood he gets every single point/counterpoint correct?

Since invoking Occam's Razor is popular around here, the fact that Barr's memo was addressed directly to Rosenstein leads me to believe Rosenstein was likely his source.

[fdcol63 🇺🇸]

Well, we're sweltering in 93+ degree weather here in FL.

Very little recent rain, and our pool was a tepid 90 yesterday.

[Marlene]

MM@4:21...this morning I drove to Bangor to do errands and went to my favorite greenhouse to get flowers. It was so cold! The woman who checked me out just shook her head when I mentioned the weather.

Melania looks lovely as always. I'm not too impressed with Ivanka's $10K gown. Kate also looks lovely.

[Buckeye]

Same here CH. Only 70 now.

[Tom R]

MJW @ 4:14

I found this letter dated 21 Dec 2018. No idea if Barr and Rosenstein actually responded to Feinstein or not.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/feinstein-requests-answers-from-barr-rosenstein-on-barr-memo-against-mueller-investigation

Based on the hits I got with Google the news that Barr wrote the memo broke on 19 Dec 2018 in the WSJ. The Democrats obviously knew about the existence of the Barr memo long before the actual confirmation hearings started. Did they not bring it up during his formal confirmation hearing?

[henry]

@postlocal

Figure linked to Trump transition charged in Virginia with transporting child pornography

https://twitter.com/postlocal/status/1135630036902567936?s=21

@bikinimowing

He is Obama ‘s White House council’s Attorney. He worked with Weissmann on the Enron case. Friends with Mueller. Why no mention of that?

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

If keto = eels I. Am. Out.

[Davod]

"John Dean's a convicted felon who was disbarred. Can't they find a single untainted "expert"?

It is his "Taintedness" they want.

[clarice]

I love Japanese grilled eel.

[MissMarple2]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7099553/Trump-Melania-meet-Queen-Buckingham-Palace.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK

I did not realize all of the grown Trump children were there, including Tiffany, as well as Lara, Eric's wife, and Jared Kushner.

This article is jam-packed with details, photos, and videos, including a diagram of all of the vehicles in the Presidential Motorcade.

[Tom R]

Henry @ 4:53

No mention of Slick Willie either.

https://twitter.com/jarradkushner/status/1135636168555425792?s=21

[MissMarple2]

I have a question, and I don't mean to be offensive.

Is Ivanka's gown long-sleeved because she is a convert to Orthodox Judaism?

[lyle]

Hmmm. Isn’t keto an acronym for:

kale
eels
tripe
organs

😉

[lyle]

It is his “Taintedness” they want.

Eww.

[Dave (in MA)]

From an Instapundit post:

Chipotle could raise burrito prices by 5¢ if Mexico tariffs become permanent.

E. Coli, listeria and salmonella, no extra charge.