August 25, 2023

Friday, August 25, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

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Joe is always busy.

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Kamala is always busy.

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Mr. Trump went to the jail in Georgia.

Touch 👇 to watch the Trump motorcade.

The mugs in Georgia.

Mugshots of nine of Donald Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia 'criminal enterprise' attempt to overturn the 2020 election have been released by the Fulton County Sheriff's Office.

Top row (left to right). Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Cathleen Latham.

Middle row (left to right). Ray Smith, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro.

Bottom row (left to right) Scott Hall, John Eastman, David Shafer.

Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows.

Harrison Floyd,former executive director of Black Voices for Trump,remains in custody Thursday evening because he showed up to his booking without a lawyer.

And here is the mugshot you have all been waiting for, from a very troubled man.

Inmate #P01135809.

One more thing.

Defendant Chesebro invoked his right to a speedy trial. Yes, Trump asked his case be severed from the others so his case can got sl-o-o-o-w. Ha!

Then this happened too.

Judge McAfee, the state court judge assigned to Willis' case has entered an order confirming an 11/3 trial date. Defendants will line up to try & get their cases severed, as Trump has already asked.

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I couldn’t resist this.👇

For those who don’t know, Trump, at the Rice Street Jail in Fulton County, Georgia on Thursday, self-reported to be 6’3”,215 pounds. OMG.

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The world watched 10 murders on Wednesday.

Tom Nichols’s article below 👇 is very convincing about what happened in Russia on Wednesday. An important read about a shocking murder - which killed 10. An analysis of how a dictator uses murder to stay in power. And no one in the world seems capable of doing anything about murders committed right in front of us.

A Very Public Execution in Russia

A jet plunging out of the sky sends an unmistakable message.

A plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary chief who led a short-lived mutiny two months ago, crashed today in a sparsely populated area northwest of Moscow. According to Russian media, Prigozhin and at least one of his top commanders are dead. As is always the case with breaking news, there is much we don’t know, but the sight of Prigozhin’s jet falling out of the sky suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin has conducted a public execution of a man who was once a trusted friend but later provided the greatest challenge that the Russian dictator has ever faced.

Here’s what we do know. The aircraft was one of Prigozhin’s personal business jets. The plane, a widely used Embraer Legacy 600, took off from Moscow and likely was headed toward St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s base of operations. It was flying at 28,000 feet before it plunged to earth, according to flight-tracking data. A second jet, also believed to belong to Prigozhin, then turned around and landed safely in Moscow, but Russia’s aviation ministry has confirmed that Prigozhin and the Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin were listed as passengers on the crashed jet.

This is functionally the end of the Wagner Group, which has been among the most effective Russian fighting units in Ukraine. But killing Prigozhin and his lieutenants makes sense, at least according to the Mafia logic that governs Putin’s Kremlin. Prigozhin not only threatened Putin’s authority; he humiliated him. During Prigozhin’s ragged rebellion, Putin was visibly furious, but he soon agreed to meet Prigozhin for a discussion in Moscow. For a gangster boss like Putin, having to meet with the man who betrayed him must have been intolerable: The Russian president has reportedly ordered people killed for far less than marching on the capital.

If the plane crash was an execution, however, plenty of questions remain. Why now? And why in Russia? There are several indications that this was not a random aviation accident, but a signature move by the Putin regime to remind Russians, and especially Russia’s elites, that no one survives opposing the Kremlin’s master.

The timing issue may not be all that puzzling. (Why Prigozhin risked being in Russia at all is a larger mystery, but he is, or was, legendarily arrogant.) Although many in both Russia and the West expected Putin to move against Prigozhin almost immediately after the Wagner rebellion last June, his patience may reflect his insecurity. Prigozhin’s almost effortless success in occupying the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, and the ease with which he marched thousands of men to within some 200 miles of the capital, must have enraged and terrified Putin. The Russian president has probably spent weeks huddled with his most trusted security and military subordinates trying to figure out exactly who knew what about Prigozhin’s plans.

Rooting out a conspiracy takes time; so does planning a murder. The initial deal between the Kremlin and Prigozhin, brokered by Belarusian President (and Putin crony) Aleksandr Lukashenko, allowed Prigozhin and his men to leave Russia and take shelter in Belarus. But because of that deal, Putin couldn’t kill Prigozhin in Belarus without making a fool of Lukashenko. Likewise, although Prigozhin traveled in dangerous areas—yesterday, he released a video of himself in which he claimed to be in the Sahel—killing him far from home in a place such as Africa might have left some doubt about how he died, or whether he died at all.

Blowing up a plane flying out of Moscow two months to the day after Prigozhin’s rebellion ended, however, sends an unambiguous message.

Unless a bomb was on board, only a military system could shoot down a plane at 28,000 feet, and only a Russian military system would be present so deep inside Russia. (The reported crash site is more than 100 miles northwest of Moscow.)

The Russian Ministry of Defense—the object of Prigozhin’s fury during his brief rebellion—would have to be involved in an attack at that distance and altitude. If Putin wanted to send a message that Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu was still in favor and that Prigozhin had to pay for his insolence, this was a clear way to do it.

Taking down a business jet is also a message to Russia’s elites, who rely heavily on private aviation to get around the country. If Putin is willing to reach out and kill Prigozhin in broad daylight over Russia, no one is safe.

(Recall as well that Putin himself is reported to be jumpy about flying; he travels around Russia in a special train, much like Stalin did in his day.)

One other event in particular suggests a link to Shoigu in this regard: The same day that Prigozhin’s plane went down, two Russian outlets reported that General Sergei Surovikin had been removed from his post as the commander of Russian aerospace forces. Surovikin, nicknamed General Armageddon, was one of the few competent Russian field commanders in Ukraine, but like a series of other Russian generals, he was scapegoated for Russia’s poor military performance and relieved of command. When Prigozhin began his march, Surovikin made what looked very much like a coerced appearance in a video, with a gun in his lap, asking the mutineers to stand down. Rumors flew in Moscow that he knew of Prigozhin’s plans and supported them; he was soon detained (“resting,” according to a Russian official) and disappeared from public view.

If Prigozhin’s plot was aimed at Shoigu with Surovikin’s connivance, then destroying his jet in flight using aerospace assets that might have once been under Surovikin’s command is like throwing a Defense Ministry calling card on the burning bodies. Shoigu might be hated, and Surovikin might have been respected, but—again, to put this in a Mafia context—no one takes a shot at an underboss without permission.

As Ian Fleming’s villain Goldfinger warned James Bond: Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action. It’s possible that Prigozhin’s jet suffered a random mishap. It’s possible that the mishap took place exactly two months to the day after Prigozhin’s mutiny. It’s possible that the head of Russia’s air force was relieved at the same time that all this took place. But that’s a hell of a lot of coincidences, especially in a country where few things of importance happen without direction from Red Square.

Prigozhin has almost certainly been living on borrowed time since last June. But if he is dead in today’s crash, Vladimir Putin has taken his revenge in spectacular fashion. Still to be determined, however, is whether another murder will be enough to quell the growing instability in the streets, boardrooms, and barracks of Russia.(Tom Nichols, The Atlantic).

New York Times - It’s Likely Prigozhin Was Killed,’ Pentagon Says.

The Pentagon said for the first time that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary leader who staged a brief mutiny in June against Russia’s military leadership, was likely killed in a plane crash yesterday.

The leading theory among U.S. officials is that he was killed by an explosion onboard, possibly caused by a bomb.

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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia . . . made his first comments on Yevgeny V. Prigozhin’s apparent death, speaking about him in the past tense in a meeting broadcast on television. “This was a person with a complicated fate,” Mr. Putin said. “He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved necessary results.”

Putin said he was told that Prigozhin had returned from Africa earlier Wednesday, shortly before his apparent death, and had held meetings with officials in Moscow. He said that Russian investigators would pursue the investigation into the crash “to the end.”

One more thing.

From Reuters - The aircraft showed no sign of problems until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data. The Embraer Legacy 600 has only recorded one accident in over 20 years of service, and that was not related to mechanical failure.

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Thoughts on ending homelessness.

Chicago.

Good morning, Chicago.

Mayor Brandon Johnson is changing the proposal behind one of his hallmark campaign promises to increase the real estate transfer tax on high-end houses and use the money to fight homelessness.

The new plan, which Johnson introduced this week, would create a tiered tax rate system in which the owners of a home that sells for less than $1 million would pay less in transfer taxes than they would now, while residential properties upward of $1.5 million would see a higher rate increase than in the earlier proposal.

Shifting from a flat-rate increase for sales above $1 million to a three-tiered system was in part to address concerns about burdening property owners of smaller multifamily buildings. The proposal is expected to be introduced in September to the City Council, which could vote in October on whether to place the measure on the March 2024 primary ballot. It would then be up to voters whether to approve or reject the modifications to the tax. (Source. Chicago Tribune).

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US Postal Service to unveil stamp honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The U.S. Postal Service is set to unveil its new stamp honoring late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this October.

The Postal Service announced Thursday it will hold a first-day-of-issue ceremony in October for the new Forever stamp commemorating Ginsburg’s legacy. 

Ginsburg passed away at the age of 87 in 2020 due to complications from pancreatic cancer. She served on the Supreme Court for 27 years. 

The stamp features an oil painting of Ginsburg wearing her black judicial robe and white collar. Postal Service art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamp with art by Michael J. Deas, which was based on a photograph by Philip Bermingham. (The Hill).

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