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.
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.
China is vastly expanding their nuclear weapons arsenal and would really like Russia and the United States to reduce theirs. They are adding roughly 100 modern weapons per year.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/parading-chinas-nuclear-arsenal-out-shadows
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-expiration-us-russia-arms-treaty-regrettable-2026-02-05/
Chicoms been enjoying not being constrained by arms control while we are.
Wouldn’t get too worked up. Even if you destroyed the 1000 largest Chinese cities, you’d still be left with something close to 700 million Chinese.
Most of the rest would’s second largest population would probably die from the fallout if that many bombs were dropped.
You can reasonably assume the CCP have been bullshitting their population numbers for 70 years. Same BS as their economic numbers.
If the truck driver came used the CBP One app during the Biden administration, maybe that was programmed to put the record in the DHS databases as a legal entry with all the privileges of a person who came in through fully legal means such as a work visa. Would not surprise me if that was the case. Does anyone know what that app did back in the Biden years?
Didn’t the Penn DOT apply ANY kind of language and driving test to the alien before giving him a CDL?
Per my comment yesterday, I still blame the Pennsylvania burocracy for those 4 deaths.
Think of the what-inspired-the-safety-brief for this:
How could you tell if a gator is on drugs in the first place?
“Maaaaan, what WAS that? I see purple people.”
It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin purple people eater…
(Christ, I’m old.)
You know Sheb Wooley was an actor? He was one of the bad guys in “High Noon”. He was also the old Cav sergeant in “Silverado” with the memorable line “Had a gal once did that to me, didn’t mean she was my wife”.
The things one learns from TAH. Astounding.
Two of my most fave Western movies.
The wheels on that KC-46 are fine, and did what they were supposed to do. After a “rejected takeoff” — the aircraft was heading down the runway at speed but before actually making the take off the pilot had to slam on the brakes– those brake rotors will be glowing red hot and could explode. As a safety measure, each wheel is fitted with a soft metal plug that is designed to melt at high temperatures, safely venting the air (actually, nitrogen), and avoiding a violent explosion that could damage the aircraft or persons in the area.
Now, the Air Force must wait until support units can jack up the plane, remove each wheel, replace the plugs and possibly the brake rotors, then install the tires.
I’m more curious what led to the rejected takeoff.
“I realize this is all posturing, but it does seem that DHS’ clearance process is seriously in need of examination.”
I agree. There’s a multitude of federal databases that don’t talk to each other perfectly nor automatically.
I love where this is going! Let’s get Elon and the DOGE Boys on this, employ some Big Data analysis and computer automation to make everything truly seamless and automatic.
No more “not sending information to ICE” bullshit.
Examples:
Alien overstays visa. At 00:00 on the day after the visa expires, a warrant is automatically entered in NCIC.
Alien is convicted of a crime that is disqualifying for presence in the United States. Order for removal generated and electronically signed, warrant entered in NCIC, and local ICE offices notified.
Alien with a order for removal gets encountered by local law enforcement. Upon the NCIC “hit”, local immigration office automatically notified of location and agency who had the encounter.
The list goes on, and can expand to other subjects- drivers licensing, public benefits, and employment. And since it sounds like one Democrat supports this, isn’t that “bipartisan” support??
This seems to be by design. The same people that want unlimited, uncontrolled immigration don’t want the federal government to get organized.
Imagine all the violent grasping illegal aliens in the world raping your kids and voting Democrat for Free Sh*t paid by your taxes forever!
That definitely streamlines the process. It’ll put thousands of governmental admin oxygen thieves out of work. The unions won’t stand for that, unfortunately.
If I had a dime for every time Bernie the Red said, “oligarch,” I’d be among them.
Seriously, how did that FBI investigation into his wife go? Not every day you bankrupt an entire college using fake loan data, especially when the tuition at said (non-accredited) college was something like $75k/year.
GREAT first line. I may steal it
Yes, the bitch committed loan fraud by representing the school had firm donations supporting the loan repayment when many of them were merely stated intent to name the school in the donors’ estate plans. She could have been charged with federal bank fraud, wire and mail fraud. And unlike Trump’s organization, the subject loan was not paid back in full with interest.
Off topic but relevant to a never-was wanna-be punk band:
It’s not “Toes in Revolt”.