Oklahoma medical board lawyer charged with making threats

The top lawyer at the Oklahoma State Department of Health already at the center of a controversy over new marijuana rules was charged Tuesday for allegedly sending threatening emails to herself.

The agency’s former general counsel, 37-year-old Julia Ezell of Edmond, was charged Tuesday in Oklahoma County with two felonies and one misdemeanor for allegedly sending the threats and then lying to investigators about it.

A forensic examination of Ezell’s mobile phone revealed she sent several menacing emails to her own government email address and then reported them to authorities, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Nicholas Rizzi wrote in an affidavit.

In one of the emails from “MaryJame@protonmail.com,” Ezell’s home address and vehicle description was included. The first reported email, sent on July 8, was titled “marijuana laws” and accused the government of taking away people’s rights and warned her: “We will watch you.” Ezell reported the emails to the Health Department’s own investigator, who forwarded them to state investigators.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/oklahoma-medical-board-lawyer-charged-with-making-threats/2018/07/17/78c6f8b4-8a0d-11e8-9d59-dccc2c0cabcf_story.html

Missed this the other day. Shades of John Barron.

First Test Drive of the Tesla Model 3 Performance: A Thrilling, Modern Marvel

ENTER, STAGE LEFT, humming: I have borrowed a new 2018 Tesla Model 3 Performance ($78,000, as tested) from the factory in Fremont, Calif., and I’m now quietly tearing the hide off this switchback road in the grass-gold hills near Silicon Valley. This is the first test drive of the hotrod Tesla. In the Performance version, two motors north and south equal 335 kW (450 hp) and digitally mastered all-wheel drive, with corner-exiting acceleration that will leave average BMW M4s with a soft auf Wiedersehen.

And this is guilt-free hooning since I’ll recover, going downhill, most energy expended going up. Give her the spurs, Moon Flower.

The Model 3’s uncanny stability while cornering is mostly the product of its lithium-battery keel; but Tesla didn’t skimp on the suspension bits: upper and lower A arms (aluminum and steel) with virtual steer axis geometry, twin-tube coilovers and anti-roll bar in front; in the rear, a multi-link geometry, also with twin-tube shocks and anti-roll bar. For now the hottest tires available are the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, which are nice all-rounders but not particularly grippy. My message to the engineers: more tire.

I’m no financial analyst, but I do know cars. If you were hoping Tesla would fail on account of the Model 3 I’ve got bad news: This thing is magnificent, a little rainbow-farting space ship, so obviously representative of the next step in the history of autos. I know there are a lot of Tesla bears, haters and cynics out there. Tesla boss Elon Musk makes it easy. But in the spirit of charity I think we can all agree many brilliant people are putzes.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-ever-review-of-the-tesla-model-3-performance-a-thrilling-modern-marvel-1532022533?emailToken=478d482c274a1f3124a16473be6cb647rtQ8jGfyl7/Hcj9+t9ITeGn4e8HzdH4x/glDXhcrMGBJgjna7YwsqQQ33cZ6eDVtE64sMuS6ZjNuvnNGP5YFXbilSo5VyEsmn+eofWsMqceblP7Vt9fVicQOUzIztIy6MhQG8CIYoZ990y2aYFTP3Q%3D%3D&reflink=article_email_share

Adam Schiff: Trump is 'gravest threat to American democracy' he's ever seen

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee called President Trump the “gravest threat to American democracy” he’s ever seen after a Helsinki summit at which, he said, the president showed that he was “prepared to essentially betray the national security interests of the United States.”

“One of the terrible realizations of the last year and a half for me is that the damage that the Russians have done to our democracy by meddling in our election is nothing compared to the damage our own president is doing to our democracy by attacking the Justice Department and by denigrating our press,” Rep. Adam Schiff said in an interview with the Yahoo News podcast Skullduggery. “I think he is doing enormous damage to our national security beyond anything the Russians could do to us.”

The comments represented a significant ratcheting up of the attacks on President Trump and his Russian ties that Schiff has been regularly delivering on cable TV for the past year and a half. He spoke to Skullduggery at the Aspen Security Forum in the aftermath of a Helsinki summit in which Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin for two hours alone – with no other American officials in the room – and then, at a joint press conference, questioned the findings of the U.S. intelligence community that Russians had meddled in the U.S. election, in part because he said Putin had forcefully denied the meddling during the private session.

Although the White House has since walked back Trump’s press conference statements, Schiff said legitimate questions remain about whether the president has been compromised by the Russians.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/adam-schiff-trump-prepared-essentially-betray-u-s-interests-helsinki-191836626.html

Tesla Model S: Greatest car of the 2010s

While we’re technically not through with the 2010s, we think it’s already safe to pick the greatest car to come out of this decade.

There have been huge leaps forward in automotive technology over the past few years. Cars are faster, more efficient, and quieter, while the rapid advances in active safety technology continue to bring us closer to cars that can actually drive themselves. For the most part, however, cars still work pretty much the same way they always have, powered by a piston engine that’s fueled by the black goop that we pump out of the ground. Only one car of the 2010s has lit a different path. Only one has shown the world not only the efficiency and environmental advantages of electric power, but it has also shown the performance advantages of electric power and wrapped it all up in a sleek, appealing, and expensive-but-attainable package.

In other words, only one has made the electric car cool, and that’s the Tesla Model S.

While there have been plenty of missed deadlines and controversy surrounding Tesla, the company’s Model S’s influence on the world of electric-car innovation is undeniable. The first all-new major American carmaker in years, Tesla started out building a neat but low-volume all-electric roadster based on the Lotus Elise. Less than 2500 were built, but the Tesla Roadster got the brand’s name out there, increased public awareness of high-performance electrics, and raised some cash.

https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2018/07/12/tesla-model-s-greatest-car-of-the-2010s

World Wonders What Trump Has On United States That's Forcing Nation To Keep Him In Power

EARTH—Assuming the controversial president of the United States must be in possession of potentially damning information concerning his home country in order to keep them so completely under his control, the rest of the world wondered aloud Tuesday about exactly what Trump has on America that compels the nation to keep him in power.

“Whoa, he must have some real bad dirt on the U.S. populace for them to just let him get away with so much unconscionable bullshit. You have to wonder what he knows,” said billions of world inhabitants outside of President Trump’s jurisdiction, further speculating that the only possible explanation for the continued deference of American elected officials, American media, and American citizens to an obviously corrupt and incompetent leader would be Trump’s possession of damaging information that could take down the entire country.

“There’s no way a truly proud and free nation would put up with this if Trump weren’t blackmailing them with something really, really bad—something so unspeakably heinous that it would destroy their country if anyone found out. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they nail this asshole to a burning outhouse?”

At press time, the world was experiencing a sinking feeling that Trump may have compromising information on them as well.

https://politics.theonion.com/world-wonders-what-trump-has-on-united-states-that-s-fo-1827666980

Inside the Decade-Long Russian Campaign to Infiltrate the NRA and Help Elect Trump

In November 2013, the president of the National Rifle Association, David Keene, was introduced as an honored guest at the conference of the Right to Bear Arms, a gun lobby in Moscow. “There are no peoples that are more alike than Americans and Russians,” Keene said. “We’re hunters. We’re shooters. We value the same kinds of things.” Keene underscored his friendship with Alexander Torshin, a top politician in the ruling party of Vladimir Putin; for the past three years, Keene said, “I’ve hosted your senator Alexander Torshin at the National Rifle Association’s annual meetings.” In words that now carry a darker connotation, Keene insisted, “We need to work together.”

Torshin, now 64, is a roly-poly politician, perhaps five feet six, with thick glasses and a passion for borscht – “like medicine!” he once tweeted. A member of Putin’s right-wing United Russia party, he served in the Russian senate for more than a decade, forging close ties to Russia’s internal security service, the FSB, which awarded him a medal in 2016. His embrace of Keene, says Steven Hall, who served as chief of Russian operations for the CIA until 2015, was about more than forging “an international brotherhood of the NRA.”

As part of Putin’s “active measures,” Hall says, Russia has attempted to influence right-wing and populist factions abroad, preaching unity around social conservatism: “‘We’re both religious-based countries – we have the Orthodox Church that’s a big deal for us.’?” The Russians, Hall believes, “made a natural transition in the United States to the NRA”; over time Putin became determined to exploit the American gun lobby “and decided Mr. Torshin is going to be the guy to do it for him.”

Keene proved an easy mark. A career lobbyist who advised presidential candidates from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney, he was a longtime chair of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the annual CPAC convention. NRA board member Grover Norquist has praised Keene as “a conservative Forrest Gump” who’s been at “the center of all things conservative for decades.” Keene, with a sweep of white hair, owlish glasses and a patrician bearing, might move in cutthroat political circles, but friends say his personality runs against type. “He’s like a teddy bear,” says Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, who has known Keene for decades. “He’s not hard-edged at all. He’s a gentleman.” (Keene did not respond to multiple interview requests.)

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/inside-the-decade-long-russian-campaign-to-infiltrate-the-nra-and-help-elect-trump-630054/

Rolling Stone broke this story 3 months ago, and is a key reason why I subscribe to the magazine.

The entire GOP are traitors. It's that simple.

American traitor Donald Trump’s shameful performance at the Surrender Summit has removed all doubt about where his allegiances lie—believing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s lies over his own intelligence agencies. His slavish performance, akin to a puppy dog desperate for his master’s attention, wasn’t just geopolitically embarrassing, it wasn’t just humiliating to watch as an American, it was also an overt admission that America is now a Russian puppet state.

A former RNC chairman and former CIA agent have called Trump’s performance treasonous. A handful of Republican senators have expressed disapproval to some degree or another, while doing nothing more to hold Trump accountable.

Yet for the most part, the Republican Party has dithered between silence and outright surrender in the face of this Russian aggression—aggression that has extended to brazenly murdering allies. And Trump and his Republicans don’t care, and haven’t, since the day that top Republicans Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarty were taped saying that they believed that Trump and other Republicans were literally on the Kremlin payroll. But they got their tax cuts and Supreme Court seats, so what do they care? If they had to surrender their country to their historical boogeyman to enact their agenda, well, it was an acceptable price to make.

That is called treason. And most Republicans aren’t even hiding it anymore.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/16/1780958/-The-entire-GOP-are-traitors-It-s-that-simple

The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

For about a week every year in my childhood, I was a member of one of America’s fading aristocracies. Sometimes around Christmas, more often on the Fourth of July, my family would take up residence at one of my grandparents’ country clubs in Chicago, Palm Beach, or Asheville, North Carolina. The breakfast buffets were magnificent, and Grandfather was a jovial host, always ready with a familiar story, rarely missing an opportunity for gentle instruction on proper club etiquette. At the age of 11 or 12, I gathered from him, between his puffs of cigar smoke, that we owed our weeks of plenty to Great-Grandfather, Colonel Robert W. Stewart, a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt who made his fortune as the chairman of Standard Oil of Indiana in the 1920s. I was also given to understand that, for reasons traceable to some ancient and incomprehensible dispute, the Rockefellers were the mortal enemies of our clan. Only much later in life did I learn that the stories about the Colonel and his tangles with titans fell far short of the truth.

At the end of each week, we would return to our place. My reality was the aggressively middle-class world of 1960s and ’70s U.S. military bases and the communities around them. Life was good there, too, but the pizza came from a box, and it was Lucky Charms for breakfast. Our glory peaked on the day my parents came home with a new Volkswagen camper bus. As I got older, the holiday pomp of patriotic luncheons and bridge-playing rituals came to seem faintly ridiculous and even offensive, like an endless birthday party for people whose chief accomplishment in life was just showing up. I belonged to a new generation that believed in getting ahead through merit, and we defined merit in a straightforward way: test scores, grades, competitive résumé-stuffing, supremacy in board games and pickup basketball, and, of course, working for our keep. For me that meant taking on chores for the neighbors, punching the clock at a local fast-food restaurant, and collecting scholarships to get through college and graduate school. I came into many advantages by birth, but money was not among them.

I’ve joined a new aristocracy now, even if we still call ourselves meritocratic winners. If you are a typical reader of The Atlantic, you may well be a member too. (And if you’re not a member, my hope is that you will find the story of this new class even more interesting—if also more alarming.) To be sure, there is a lot to admire about my new group, which I’ll call—for reasons you’ll soon see—the 9.9 percent. We’ve dropped the old dress codes, put our faith in facts, and are (somewhat) more varied in skin tone and ethnicity. People like me, who have waning memories of life in an earlier ruling caste, are the exception, not the rule.

By any sociological or financial measure, it’s good to be us. It’s even better to be our kids. In our health, family life, friendship networks, and level of education, not to mention money, we are crushing the competition below. But we do have a blind spot, and it is located right in the center of the mirror: We seem to be the last to notice just how rapidly we’ve morphed, or what we’ve morphed into.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

Pretty long but interesting read.

Towers Toppled at Historic Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 17

The last two launch towers to stand at Cape Canaveral since the dawn of the Space Age are no more.

The twin mobile gantries at Launch Complex 17 (LC-17) were imploded Thursday morning (July 12), toppling the oldest remaining launch pad structures at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The United States Air Force's 45th Space Wing oversaw the demolition, which leveled the landmark towers just after 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

"3... 2... 1... Fire in the hole!" announced Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, commander of the 45th Space Wing, before pushing a button to initiate a series of detonations. Seconds later, the towers fell over, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake. [NASA's 10 Greatest Science Missions]

"It is part of history, which we are doing every single day out here on the range," said Monteith, per a video recorded by Florida Today, the local area's newspaper.

https://www.livescience.com/63056-historic-launch-towers-toppled-cape-canaveral.html

Last sighting of Trump baby balloon