Saturday Short Bits

Let’s stay with the mundane today, eh?

Opening, I see that Mr. Man of the Poor People, Bernie Sanders, spent over a half a million dollars on private jets last year, most of it when traveling with AOC promoting their Red Green New Deal.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who crisscrossed the country last year on a Fighting Oligarchy tour with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., spent over $550,000 in 2025 on private jet travel for himself using campaign funds, a Fox News Digital review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings found.

The majority of the spending came in the first two quarters, which cover up until July. That is also when Sanders and AOC had the majority of their tour stops across the country. Fox News

Both of them espouse the “climate change is an existential threat” mantra and condemn private jets. Except when flying on them (like every other non-oligopoly person does, right?)

Bush league, Bernie. The President blows more than that on a weekend golf trip… and golfs most weekends.

Let’s talk briefly about the KC-46 tanker (the one that is replacing the KC-135 et al.) The Air Force Air Mobility Command (AMC) has released its report on three KC-46 incidents, with a fourth still pending, in which the $23,000,000 worth of damage to date has been found to be attributable to one cause.

The incidents all involved nozzle binding, a situation in which the tanker’s refueling boom nozzle gets stuck or binds with the receiving aircraft’s receptacle.

Two of the incidents occurred in 2022 and a third in 2024. A fourth mishap took place July 8, 2025 and is still being investigated, AMC stated.  TWZ

The reports summaries are interesting reading. In each, both the refueling tanker pilots and fuel recipient pilots get grief for inadequately compensating for the known stiff boom design. You would think someone should be saying “we know this design causes problems, maybe we need to fix a problematic design?”

Another problem area seems to be that the boom, after breaking loose from the fighters  (three F15s, one F-22) tends to pop upward into the rear fuselage of the tanker. Just a wild guess – maybe the boom’s arc of upward travel could be limited while fueling? Just a thought (no idea how expensive such a thought is, hut just one of these incidents set us back more than $8,000,000 so the tradeoff may be worth it.)

In other news, a KC-46 lost an engine during takeoff at Moron Air Base, Spain (be nice, now) and in the ensuing emergency stop blew out 8 tires. This happened several day ago, and the plane is still blocking the runway. (Was on a 777 once when something similar happened. Got exciting for a few minutes. Gate  agent said essentially everything associated with the landing gear was pretty much ruined due to heat from the brakes.)  Looks to me like the tires have lost their bottom air?  TWZ II

And we’ll close with an expiration date. As of February 5, the New START Treaty, signed in 2010 between President Obama and Russian leader Medvedev, is officially dead.

Russia formally suspended its participation in the treaty in 2023, citing U.S. actions in relation to the war in Ukraine, but said it would voluntarily continue to abide by the imposed limits. The agreement now sunsets for good today. Years of U.S.-Russian negotiations have so far failed to produce a follow-on treaty.

New START limited each country to 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers (700), 1,550 total strategic nuclear warheads, and 800 relevant deployed and non-deployed launchers. For purposes of the treaty, strategic missiles were defined as ICBMs and SLBMs. Each reentry vehicle inside a single ICBM or SLBM, as well as each nuclear-capable heavy bomber, counted as a single warhead.

TWZ III

Practically speaking: the Minutemen missiles was designed for Multiple Independent Re-Entry Vehicles (MIRV) but under the treaty only one warhead was allowed. Many B-52s were configured for conventional weapons only, and four launch tubes on each Ohio-class boomer were sealed.

There is talk of a one-year extension of the treaty but none has been agreed to date. Worth checking out the linked article.

Remember we spoke of at least a couple of cops who supposedly were cleared by DHS’ database when they were in fact illegal? Another one cropped up, a truck driver who swerved into an oncoming lane to avoid a stopped semi and killed 4 people in a van.

“Not only was Bekzhan Beishekeev released into our country by the Biden administration using the CBP One app, but he was also given a commercial driver’s license by Governor Shapiro’s Pennsylvania. These decisions have had deadly consequences and led to the death of four innocent people in Indiana on Tuesday,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Sounds pretty damning. But, according to Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro’s office:

“Every person who applies for a non-domiciled commercial driver’s license issued by PennDOT must provide proof of identify and proof of their legal presence in the United States. That information is verified by the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, administered by Kristi Noem and the United States Department of Homeland Security,” Shapiro spokesperson Alex Peterson said in a statement provided to Fox News.

“The individual in question had legal status in Kristi Noem’s database when the license was issued in July 2025 and still shows as eligible to receive a license as of today. Kristi Noem should focus on minding the shop in her own agency, as her incompetence and operational failures seem to be matching the scale of her moral failures as the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Peterson added.

I realize this is all posturing, but it does seem that DHS’ clearance process is seriously in need of examination.

Category: Air Force, Crime, Navy, Nukes