Rich Nut Job Seeks Employment

Bobby Brainworm has been talking to both campaigns about an endorsement in exchange for a job.

No word if either campaign is crazy enough to want him on board.

Another Dumbass

A US citizen has been detained in Russia for alleged violence against a police officer, local media report.

The man was arrested in a Moscow hotel on the night of 12 August after refusing to "provide identification documents", news agency Interfax said on Wednesday, citing Russia's Investigative Committee.

A criminal case has been opened against him, and he could face up to five years in prison.

At this point, any American citizen who goes to or is in Russia without diplomatic cover is a certified grade-a dumbass.

Enjoy the Joint, Asswipe

A former Cornell University student has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for posting violent threats against members of the school's Jewish community last fall.

[Asswipe], a 22-year-old from Pittsford, N.Y., pleaded guilty earlier this year to one felony count of "posting threats to kill or injure another person using interstate communications."

As part of that plea, he took responsibility for a series of messages threatening violence against Jewish people on campus that he posted to the Cornell section of an online discussion forum.

His mouthpiece said that Asswipe was engaged in some sort of bass-ackwards one-man operation to garner support for Israel. And, of course, he's not right in the head.

Yeah, right.

Another Lunatic Commits Ballot Fraud

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign suffered a blow this week when a judge in New York invalidated his petition to put his name on the state ballot, a ruling that could potentially create problems for the candidate as he faces challenges elsewhere.

Justice Christina Ryba said Monday that the place in New York City’s suburbs that Kennedy listed as a residence on nominating petitions was a “sham” address he used to maintain his voter registration and to further his political aspirations. The judge ruled in favor of the challengers, who argued Kennedy’s actual residence was the home in Los Angeles he shares with his wife, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor Cheryl Hines.

He's a lying little brain-wormed cocksucker, all right. His statement of candidacy, which he filed last month with the Federal Elections Commission, lists his residence as Lost Angeles, CA.

So if he is claiming that he is a New York state resident, then he should be charged with lying on a federal form (like, say, Hunter Biden) and tried on a felony charge.

Necroposting These Down, Here

You May Test Your Belief at Your Convenience, Asshole

And see where it gets you, you Nazi bastard.

Herman Brusselmans, some douchebag in Belgium, wrote in an opinion column that he wants to “ram a sharp knife through the throat of every Jew I meet.”

He says that's freedom of speech. So is it freedom of speech to say that it would be fun to use him to reenact the butt bombing in "Man on Fire".

The Trump-Trot (or Gish Gallop)

At Demented Donnie's presser last week, he told 162 lies in 64 minutes. That is close to three fibs a minute, a lie every 23 seconds.

It really is no exaggeration to say that every word that Donald Trump says is a lie, including the articles and conjunctions. He can't not lie about anything and everything. No wonder his lawyers won't let him take the stand; he'd talk himself into multiple perjury charges in a few minutes.

All he does is:

He's just not right in the head, bless his heart.

Meanwhile, he's flying around on Jeffry Epstein's old Gulfstream. Snark seems superfluous.

No, I Believe That He Said "Fucking Bitch."

Former President Donald Trump reportedly has used a slur often targeted at women to describe Vice President Kamala Harris during at least two private conversations. His campaign denies it.

The New York Times cited two people who, on different occasions, heard Trump call Harris a “b——.” The people were granted anonymity to describe private discussions.

Anyone who believes that the TOFF didn't say that hasn't been paying attention for the last nine years. Dolt-45 has little to no regard for women and that is a well-established fact.

Meanwhile, JD Vance got off his couch to protest that the Democrats are engaged in name-calling. Others wondered if Vance had ever met or listened to Trump, who has been hurling insults and engaging in name-calling since he descended his golden escalator.

A Perilous Time to Be in the Surface Navy

Not from submarines, mind you. Subs are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain and expensive to operate, given the cost of having well-trained crews. Badly-trained crews can be deadly for the boats. That cost is why one can probably count the navies that can run subs well on two hands and not use all your fingers.

No, I am referring to a development of the Russo-Ukrainian War: The unmanned surface vehicle (USV). Oh, they were around before as experimental stuff, but the Ukrainians rammed that technology to fruition at the sort of development speed unseen since the Second World War. Like the GIs who came up with things like Rhino tank, the Ukrainians are not being constrained by a ossified bureaucracy and their development cycle (idea->design->prototype->test->manufacture) is far quicker than that of the Russians.

The Ukrainian USVs have effectively denied much of the Black Sea to the Russian navy. The Russians can't get close enough to maintain a sea blockade, so Ukrainian grain exports have been continuing. Russian warships have been pushed back to bases far from the fighting.

What makes the USVs so deadly is their construction. They have very low to no freeboard, so their radar cross-section is very low. I would not be at all surprised if the top half of them are made of fiberglass, wood or carbon fiber, all of which are not radar reflective. They are propelled by electric motors and, by normally operating at relatively slow speeds, they would not have loud propeller cavitation, like a torpedo. They are likely undetectable by passive sonar at any meaningful range and, being small, they're not going to show up well on active sonar. There may be an optic mast/antenna that is about as thick as a broomstick and would be made of carbon fiber, again, hard to see on radar.

And they can pack a hell of a punch. A few hundred pounds of explosive, detonating at very close range, will blow a hole in the hull that will sink most ships that do not have good damage control equipment and crews trained for that. Which means that one good hit will kill most merchant ships or Russian navy warships.

It would not be terribly difficult to run enough of them to deny sea access to an area that is somewhat constrained by geography, such as the Red Sea. USVs may be able to loiter for extended periods. The drones could be programmed to know when to return to a designated point for recharging.

The defenses would be the same against torpedoes: Booms and nets. Which means that the ships so protected can't go to sea. The other defense is an alert topside watch, but maintaining the sharpness to look for a broomstick moving through the water on a 24/7 basis is almost impossible. The best time to run such an attack would be at night, which means that the ships have to be well-illuminated to look for a USV at close range.

And the answer to that would be a USV that has a pop-up short-range missile, such as a barrage of RPGs or something similar. Fire those off, discombobulate the crew and then hit with a few contact-USVs.

What does this mean for surface operations? Dangerous waters would be anywhere within several hundred miles of the coastline of an adversary. And if a freighter was converted to be a mothership to launch a swarm of one-way attack drones, the danger radius could be very large.

If the Taiwanese are not going all in on USV drone technology, I would be astonished. Which also means that the PRC's window to mount a successful invasion of Taiwan may be closing for a long time.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

Martin Mars:

Those Piper floatplanes looked like insects in comparison. It does look as though she shelled #4.

This one is going to a museum later this month, so this is one of her last flights.