The OpEd goes on ...

... A short summation

While "good character ≠ good president (necessarily)," nor does "bad character = bad president (necessarily)." All of the bad and mediocre presidents above had at least some redeeming qualities. Trump has none. Ethically, he is a suppurating sore on the body politic. ...

... and continues past that ...

Is the cost of repairing the damage to those US bases added into Sec Def Hegseth's total cost of Pres Trump's war of choice?

Imagine having filed a $10billion lawsuit, and the judge then dismisses it (with prejudice) because, as the Judge seems to say, the lawsuit was "grasping at straws" as it attempted to "manufacture" flaws in the WSJ's investigative reporting. ...

... There are sore losers and then there's this twunt. ...

I was going to be a little more subtle in my comment, but there it is.

Supposedly she does not like Mr El-Sayed's stance on Israel.

More from the article ...

... Voyager 1 gave controllers the silent treatment for a few days this month before resuming communication weeks before the spacecraft reaches the one-light-day milestone.

The incident happened on October 18: NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) couldn't detect a signal from the probe. On October 19, on the next scheduled communication attempt, there was still nothing. Was this it? Had the decades-long galactic venture finally ended?

Things are operating on a knife's edge for the two veteran spacecraft, which will reach their half-century next year. Voyager 2 suffered an antenna pointing issue in 2023, and a low power condition caused Voyager 1 to unexpectedly turn off one of its two radio transmitters.

The good news is that on October 20, the signal reappeared, leaving engineers wondering why Voyager 1 temporarily went silent.

Thus far, it seems a group of thrusters went offline and their backups were turned on. This could indicate onboard computers detected a problem and put the spacecraft into a safe mode.

Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: "This is the first time we've seen the spacecraft do something like this, but we are also at a point in the mission where we have to expect the unexpected.

"We're relieved to be back in contact with Voyager 1 and are eager to understand what happened." ...

Another view ...

More from the article ...

... "On November 9th, we will turn off the lights in the home where we have lived for 30 years, shut down our servers, and leave," the newspaper's leadership said in a statement. "The newspaper no longer exists.

"The Russian authorities and the Russian security services have forced our editorial team to cease its operations."

Novaya Gazeta was established in 1993. Its co-founder, Dmitri Muratov, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for defending press freedom.

Muratov was once attacked with acid paint thrown on his face and nearly lost his sight. The attackers were released by authorities.

Six of its journalists have been murdered. Others have been imprisoned, had their homes raided and were beaten by security forces.

Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the publication has been under intense pressure from the government amid a larger crackdown of independent reporting in Russia.

"The information space in Russia has disappeared," editor in chief Sokolov told CNN. "People do not know, and have no way of finding out, even what is happening in the neighboring street, because the sources of news available to them are either stories about a Russia that does not exist or propaganda promoting the way of thinking the ruling elite wants to impose on the public."

Sokolov said his team has been able to work while "encircled by the security services" for five years.

"Now it's over," the newspaper said in the statement. "We have found ourselves in a 'kill zone.'" ...

More from the article ...

... A big part of the windfall didn't come from pumping oil. It came from turning it into fuel. Chevron's refining profits jumped more than 300%, from $1.1 billion to $4.9 billion.

At Exxon, the refining and fuels business carried the quarter, with adjusted earnings more than doubling from the second quarter while oil production earnings slipped on lower prices.

That gap explains why drivers haven't felt much relief, even though crude oil prices have eased from their spring highs.

"Nobody's filling their tanks with oil. It's got to be refined, and that's been the major kink this year," Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told Scripps News.

De Haan said global refining capacity has been squeezed on several fronts. China is refining less because it can't get as much oil through the Strait of Hormuz, and Ukrainian drone strikes have knocked Russian refineries offline. ...

More from the OpEd...

... No major newspaper of which I am aware has dared to lead a story with the obvious fact that he is unworthy of office " any office " not because of what he did yesterday, and the day before, but because he is a self-seeking crook, crooked as a spirochete, a gonorrheal bacterium in the swamp of Washington, D.C.

Back in the 1990s, the Republican Party used the slogan "Character Counts!" to attack President Bill Clinton, who " as the ancient Stoic philosophers used to say " couldn't keep his dick in his pants.

Whether possession of a "good character" is an asset or flaw in a U.S. president is an unanswerable question.

Surely our two greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, were of "good character," though Washington owned slaves.

The late Jimmy Carter was a man of sterling character, but a mediocre president.

John F. Kennedy was a sleazeball and a mediocre president. But Kennedy's mediocrity as a president had nothing to do with his character. He just got the job before he was ready for it.

Dick Nixon's rotten character cost him the job, though he did some good things as president: creating the Environmental Protection Agency and opening diplomatic relations with China among them.

LBJ? Another questionable character, ignorant of Vietnam, but he bullied Congress into passing three long-overdue Civil Rights acts, all of which Trump and John Roberts' court are dismantling, with malicious intent.

Whether or not you agree with what Harry Truman did (dropping atomic bombs, creating the CIA), he never passed the buck.

And Barack Obama? Pardon my prejudice, but he is the only president in my lifetime who was both a good president and a good man. In his case I think the two are related.

And the oozing pustule in office today? He has lost favor not just because of his incompetence and corruption, but because his relentless craving to be on top of Page 1, every day, has showed the United States, and the world, what a greedy, lying, fascist, egotistical crybaby he is. And those four adjectives and the one noun do not play well in Peoria. My mom would have swatted his butt. ...

@#76 ... Or have we already been facing such an assault? ...

To wit...

As a follow-up ...

Why might Pres Trump apparently need such a safe space to retreat to?

imo, is this a preview to what we might see in early January 2029?

And what will Amazon's AI do with the video the camera records?

Who might it be shared with?

Will the video be able to be taken and used in court proceedings?

Is Amazon just extending the Flock's Big Surveillance goals into the home?

More from the article ...

... The camera speaker ships today for $249.99. Hold up a board game box and Alexa can explain the rules, or show it a box of cereal and it can help you reorder it, according to Amazon. Owners can also check in on the room from the Alexa app while they are away. The Echo Studio without a camera stays on sale at $219.99. ...

@#43 ... Eberly is here to tell you we've ...

Nah.

My view is that the eberly alias, like other far less capable current alias (hey Jeffy), is here just to troll for replies ...

But that is A Good Thing because those replies generate ad revenue to support this site.

:)

@#1 ... Time Warp ...

Back in the day, I remember reading that Mick Jagger had been considered for the lead on the film.

imo, Mr Curry's performance in that role hit it out of the park.

Mr Jagger's fame would not carry him to even come close to Mr Curry's supreme performance in the role.

OK, so the Trump admin went for the headline that it sold the missiles to Ukraine.

But has delayed the delivery so that Pres Putin can gain yet more advantage?

@#3

... and speaking of Pres Trump, his recent, I'll say, supportive comments about a male candidate's derriere leads me to this tune ...

... ICE paid almost $500 million to acquire a private prison in Minnesota that was previously offered to the state for just $75 million, according to a report. ...

OK, this leads me to ask a question ...

WTF is up with Pres Trump's wild spending spree?