Last Call For A Political Assassination In Britain

Long-time Tory MP Sir David Amess has died from stab woulds he received from a 25-year-old suspect in Essex on Thursday as he was meeting with his constituents, according to the BBC.

Conservative MP Sir David Amess has died after being stabbed at his constituency surgery in Essex.

Police said a 25-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder after the attack at a church in Leigh-on-Sea.

They said they recovered a knife and were not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "our hearts are full of shock and sadness" at the loss of "one of the kindest" people in politics.

Sir David, 69, had been an MP since 1983 and was married with five children.

Mr Johnson said Sir David had an "outstanding record of passing laws to help the most vulnerable".

"David was a man who believed passionately in this country and in its future. We've lost today a fine public servant and a much-loved friend and colleague," he said.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was "a great man, a great friend, and a great MP, killed while fulfilling his democratic role".

Sir David, who represented Southend West, was holding a constituency surgery - where voters can meet their MP and discuss concerns - at Belfairs Methodist Church in Eastwood Road North.

Essex Police said they received reports of a stabbing shortly after 12:05 BST and found a man injured.

He was treated by emergency services but died at the scene.

 

Not much to say here other than political violence in America that we've seen over the last five years has in no way been limited to the US. 

MP Jo Cox was murdered five years ago in the same situation.

Politics are dangerous.

A Case Of MAXimum Punishment

The Justice Department needed a head to roll on Boeing's 737 MAX airliners considering the company's flawed aeronautical designs ended up killing hundreds in to separate crashes. It looks like that particular cranium will belong to Boeing's former chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner.

A federal grand jury in Texas on Thursday indicted Mark Forkner, 49, Boeing’s former chief technical pilot on the 737 MAX program, charging him with fraud.

This is the only criminal charge so far resulting from a Department of Justice investigation into two deadly MAX crashes that killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

The government reached a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with Boeing in January, in which the company acknowledged fraud and criminal misconduct during certification of the MAX.

The DPA slapped Boeing with a relatively small fine of $244 million and specifically exonerated Boeing’s senior management by stating that they had not facilitated the misconduct. However, the agreement cited Forkner and his deputy as being involved.

Thursday’s indictment alleges Forkner deceived both the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing’s airline customers by withholding information about the MAX’s new flight-control system — called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS.

“In an attempt to save Boeing money, Forkner allegedly withheld critical information from regulators,” said Chad Meacham, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas. “His callous choice to mislead the FAA hampered the agency’s ability to protect the flying public and left pilots in the lurch, lacking information about certain 737 MAX flight controls.”

A trial could shed more light on why flaws in the MCAS were overlooked during certification.

Forkner is charged with two counts of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce and four counts of wire fraud.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each count of wire fraud and 10 years in prison on each count of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce.

He is expected to make his initial court appearance Friday in Fort Worth, Texas. Forkner’s attorney David Gerger said Thursday he will have no comment before then.

Forkner’s role with the MAX from the jet’s launch in 2011 through its certification in 2017 was to win approval from the FAA and regulators around the world for the MAX’s technical manuals and pilot training on the new airplane.

He was required to identify for regulators all important differences between the controls on the MAX versus the previous 737 model.

Forkner told the FAA that pilots would never have to deal with MCAS and didn’t need to know about it. He persuaded them to remove all mention of it from the pilot handbook.

 

Pilots very much did have to deal with the MCAS system and those who didn't know how to use it potentially got their planes "augered into the ground" as Chuck Yeager would say. Ignoring the system in order to sell the plane, well, the Boeing executives may have gotten away with it, but it doesn't look like Forkner will.  He's headed for the rest of his life in prison quite possibly, and I'm not exactly losing sleep over it.

Not like I'm flying anytime soon anyhow.

Orange You Glad He's Back, Con't

Donald Trump continued his complete takeover of the GOP as his own personal party, again saying Thursday that if Republicans don't find a way to "fix" the election that was "stolen" from him, that it would be a shame if Trump voters didn't show up at the polls anymore.

 

Former president Donald Trump has in the past week threatened electoral defeat for Republicans who dismiss his election falsehoods, inserted himself into the Virginia governor’s race to the delight of Democrats, and promised to root out disloyal GOP officials in legislative primaries in Arizona and Michigan.

With more than a year to go before the midterm elections, the former president is leaving no corner of the party untouched as he moves to assert his dominance, both in public and behind the scenes. His stepped-up efforts create a conundrum for many of the party’s strategists and lawmakers, who believe they could have a banner election year in 2022 if they keep the focus on President Biden and his agenda.

But Trump has repeatedly turned the focus back onto the 2020 election. He moved into new territory Wednesday when he released a statement threatening the GOP with ballot-box repercussions if candidates do not embrace his false claims that the White House race was rigged.

“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24,” Trump said, part of a barrage of statements on the election and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack that he sent out this week. “It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.”

The former president’s threat drew winces among GOP operatives and U.S. senators gathered for a donor retreat for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) in Palm Beach, Fla., this week. Many still blame Trump for the loss of two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia in runoff elections early this year, saying his false claims of fraudulent ballots kept people from coming to the polls.

“It gives everyone cold sweats over the Georgia situation and the prospect he could have some impact again,” said one top party strategist, who like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Already, many GOP candidates are following Trump’s lead, echoing false allegations that the election results were manipulated and raising the prospect that fraud will taint other elections.

In a private speech at the retreat Thursday, Trump cast himself as the GOP’s savior, saying he had brought the party back from the brink of disaster and helped Republicans hold seats on Capitol Hill — failing to mention that the party lost the White House and control of both the House and Senate under his presidency.

“It was a dying party, I’ll be honest. Now we have a very lively party,” he said, to a room of senators, donors and lobbyists, according to a recording of the event obtained by The Washington Post, before boasting of all the endorsements and telephone town halls he had done in the 2020 cycle.

He then railed against Republicans who had spoken negatively about him — naming Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah) and Ben Sasse (Neb.) at an event paid for by the NRSC — and urged the party to “stick together,” with Trump as the de facto leader.

“They cheat like hell, and they stick together,” Trump said of Democrats. “The Republican Party has to stick together.”

And he reiterated his claims that the 2020 vote was tainted by fraud, praising GOP-controlled states that have passed new voting restrictions since then.

“It’s a terrible thing what they did in Georgia and other states,” he said.

“You look at Texas, you look at a lot of states — they are correcting all the ways we were all abused over the last election . . . last two elections if you think about it,” Trump added.

In a statement Thursday, Trump spokesman Taylor Budo­wich said, “There is no one in the country that does more to increase voter engagement and participation than President Trump. Through his endorsements and massive Save America rallies, President Trump is single-handedly rebuilding the Republican Party at the ballot box.”

 

Everyone left in the GOP works for Donald Trump now, or he'll pull the plug on the ones who don't play ball. He knows he can get away with it, too.

 

What are they going to do, tell him no?

 

As I said earlier this month, the one thing that needs to happen to allow Dems to keep Congress in the midterms is happening in a deluge right now, and that's Donald Trump unleashed on the GOP and purging anyone who might be able to win a competitive general election. 

I'm glad he's back. Voting against him is the one thing that might unite everyone else.

StupidiNews!

• Former President Bill Clinton is in good condition after being admitted to UC-Irvine Medical Center to treat a urinary tract infection that spread to his bloodstream this week.
• Missouri GOP Gov. Mike Parson is vowing criminal prosecution of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper reporter after the story broke of a flawed state website vulnerable to hacking. 
• The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to take up the Biden administration's petition to block Texas's abortion law pending further "expedited" action by the court.
• The Biden administration is reversing a Trump executive order to move oversight of COVID-19 tracking data from the HHS back to the CDC.
• The FDA is recommending Moderna COVID-19 vaccine recipients over 65 receive a booster shot, as well as certain other high-risk groups.