With the defection of Phillip Lee to the Liberal Democrats, Tories, even in co-operation with the DUP (no one else will have them), have lost their Parliamentary majority.

Don’t expect this to be the end of today’s fireworks, scheduled is a motion forbidding a No Deal Brexit without a Parliamentary vote. It also directs Johnson to seek an extension from the EU (which they are likely to get because the EU can’t force them out. Johnson has said if it passes he will call Snap Elections (he would still need 2/3rds approval of Parliament which he would be likely to get) that, even accounting for short form would leave just about as much time as the 5 week suspension.

Dither with red tape a bit, proclaim the deed done, and retire to the accolades of a Churchillian exile with his new dog I suppose. Tough to figure Johnson out, in what universe is even this rosy scenario a win?

Boris Johnson loses Parliamentary majority, faces Brexit showdown
By Kevin Sullivan and Karla Adam, Washington Post
September 3, 2019

oris Johnson, speaking Tuesday before the British Parliament for only the second time since becoming prime minister, is facing a rebellion of lawmakers who are livid about his plan to shut them down and who are desperately trying to stop Britain from leaving the European Union without a withdrawal deal on Oct. 31.

The opposition, which includes members of Johnson’s Consevative Party, is seeking to take control of the agenda and pass legislation to delay Brexit by an additional three months.

Johnson has warned that if his foes succeed, he will trigger a snap general election — and bar those who vote against him this week from running as Conservatives.

In Parliament, Johnson was heckled and catcalled from almost the moment he stood to speak. He noted that Tuesday was the 80th anniversary of Britain’s entrance into World War II and said “This country still stands then as now for democracy for the rule of law.” He was met with jeering laughter.

He insisted that Britain was making progress in talks with European Union leaders about an orderly Brexit, which drew more mocking laughter.

Aided by repeated demands for “Order” by House Speaker John Bercow, Johnson said his opponents’ proposal to delay Brexit by another three months after Oct. 31 would “Force us to beg for yet another pointless delay.”

“If that happens, all the progress we have been making will have been for nothing,” Johnson said, calling the legislation “Jeremy Corbyn’s surrender bill,” referring to his chief opponent, the leader of the Labour Party.

“There are no circumstances in which I could accept anything like it,” he said. “We promised the people we would get Brexit done. Enough is enough. The country wants this done.”

In his response, Corbyn said “This reckless government only has one plan, and that is to crash out of the European Union.”

He called Johnson’s government “dangerous and reckless,” and a “government of cowardice” with “no mandate, no morals and, as of today, no majority.”

Corbyn was referring to the dramatic defection of Conservative member of Parliament Phillip Lee, who resigned while Johnson was speaking on the floor of the House of Commons. He said in his resignation letter that the Conservative Party, which he had been a member for 27 years, had become “infected with the twin diseases of populism and English nationalism.”

Lee’s move means that Johnson has lost his working majority of just one vote. That means it will be far harder to pass legislation or get anything meaningful done in Parliament.

It also could be added incentive for Johnson to seek a snap general election, which he has warned is possible in the coming weeks. Going to the voters would allow him a chance to strengthen his numbers in Parliament, and claim a mandate for his pursuit of Brexit on Oct. 31, “no matter what.”

Brexit Showdown in Parliament as Boris Johnson Warns of a General Election
By Stephen Castle, The New York Times
Sept. 3, 2019

On a day of high drama, one Conservative rebel, Phillip Lee, quit the party and marched across the House of Commons to stand with the Liberal Democrats, who have managed to stage a resurgence by positioning themselves as an unambiguously anti-Brexit party.

While his defection means that Prime Minister Boris Johnson no longer has a working majority in Parliament, the practical effect was limited, because the government will fall only if it is defeated in a confidence motion.

In a letter to the prime minister, Dr. Lee said that Brexit divisions had “sadly transformed this once great party into something more akin to a narrow faction in which one’s Conservatism is measured by how recklessly one wants to leave the European Union.”

He added: “Perhaps more disappointingly, it has become infected by the twin diseases of English nationalism and populism.”

Lawmakers are expected to try to seize control of events in Parliament, a process that is normally the preserve of the government. Such a move would clear the way for them to force Mr. Johnson to seek an extension to the Oct. 31 Brexit deadline if he fails to reach an exit agreement with the bloc.

The clash on Tuesday, as Parliament returned from its summer recess, has been made possible by a faction of lawmakers in Mr. Johnson’s own party who have said they will not support a no-deal departure, threatening to defy the prime minister’s warning that Tory rebels will be expelled from the party if they pursue the parliamentary effort.

Mr. Johnson said on Monday that he would refuse to ask the European Union to extend the deadline under any circumstances, meaning that his only option would be to call for a general election, which would be expected to be called for Oct. 14.

Of course the Tories could win… I expect Labor will tread water, Liberal Democrats will explode (though not enough to become the official opposition, they have 15 now).

The Conservatives will sink like a stone, even if Johnson doesn’t remove the whip (another way of saying delisting and denying Party support) from dissenters.

There will probably be a Labor / Liberal Democrat coalition and Nicola Sturgeon will get another vote on Scots Independence to buy her off and who knows, maybe Scotland is tired enough by now of being dinked around by a nation as manifestly insane as Great Britain.

So I mentioned the Kylo Ren Redemption / Dark Rey story arc to a friend who’s a fan and they said, “Ben killed his Father who was trying to save his sorry ass. Pretty hard to redeem yourself from that.” I opined that perhaps Disney thought the fans brain damaged and forgetful and they said, “Disney would never pull a Lucas.”

I dunno, they made Toy Story 4 (more on that soon).

Jenny Nicholson

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany; The Treaty of Paris ends the American Revolution; Bloody end to the Beslan hostage crisis in Russia; Viking 2 lands on Mars; NFL coach Vince Lombardi dies.

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

Mark Twain

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Ever hear of the NRO? Good, you’re not supposed to. The National Reconnaissance Office is more secretive than the NSA and among the things they do is image analysis of Top Secret photos like the one one of the Iranian Missile Base leaked by Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio on Twitter the other day.

But you can work the equations both ways and I doubt it would take them, professionals who do this kind of thing every day with the best equipment and fastest computers in the world, more than a moment or 2 to do with 100% certainty what it took these Sky and Tel nerds 2 days to do to 99%. Close enough for horseshoes.

Amateurs Identify U.S. Spy Satellite Behind President Trump’s Tweet
by Geoff Brumfiel, NPR
September 2, 2019

The image almost certainly came from a satellite known as USA 224, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite-tracker based in the Netherlands. The satellite was launched by the National Reconnaissance Office in 2011. Almost everything about it remains highly classified, but Langbroek says that based on its size and orbit, most observers believe USA 224 is one of America’s multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance satellites.

“It’s basically a very large telescope, not unlike the Hubble Space Telescope,” Langbroek says. “But instead of looking up to the stars, it looks down to the earth’s surface and makes very detailed images.”

The image tweeted by Trump on Friday, showing the aftermath of an accident at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Space Center, was so detailed that some experts doubted whether it really could have come from a satellite high above the planet.
…
But a small community of amateur satellite trackers was far more interested in the picture than the words. These individuals use backyard telescopes to watch satellites whizzing across the sky, and they know where most of them are—even classified ones like USA 224. “They’re super bright in the sky and are easy to find,” says Michael Thompson, a graduate student in astrodynamics at Purdue University who spots satellites in his spare time. Once a satellite is seen, it’s relatively easy to work out exactly where it will be at any point in future. “Using math to calculate an orbit is really easy,” he says.

Thompson was one of the first to use an amateur-curated database of known satellites to point the finger at USA 224. He showed it flew over the Iranian space center shortly after the accident.

Langbroek went further still. He was able to reconstruct the picture taken by USA 224 by matching the obliqueness of the circular launch pad in the image tweeted by Trump. His calculation showed that the photo was taken from the vantage of USA 224. Langbroek and another online researcher, Christiaan Triebert, also used shadows cast by towers around the launch pad as sun dials—allowing them to verify the time at which the photo was taken.

Both techniques suggest the pictures were snapped by USA 224, which flew near the site at 2:14 PM local time. “The match was perfect, basically,” Langbroek says.
…
“When I saw the image, it was so crystal clear and high-resolution that I did not believe it could come from a satellite,” says Melissa Hanham, a satellite imagery expert and deputy director of the Open Nuclear Network in Vienna, Austria. But she finds the new analysis persuasive. “Given that the satellite is in position at that moment, it’s now very likely that it was [the source of the picture],” she says.

Hanham says she is amazed a satellite can provide such clear imagery. Spy satellites must peer down through earth’s atmosphere, which is a bit like trying to look at objects in the bottom of a swimming pool. They also must snap their pictures while whizzing across the sky. Both effects can blur the fine details in images.

“I’m now scratching my head and curious about how they account for the effects of the atmosphere and motion of the objects,” she says.

And she says she thinks she’s not alone. Others will be trying to use the image to learn more about how USA 224 works. “I imagine adversaries are going to take a look at this image and reverse-engineer it to figure out how the sensor itself works and what kind of post-production techniques they’re using,” she says.

Hanham questions whether Trump’s tweet zinging the Iranians was worth the information this image provides to other nations, but she adds: “It’s his decision as the president.”

Sources and methods indeed.

A DocuDharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette tradition.

This Union Cause

This animated timeline traces the history of the labor movement and describes major events and leaders who helped build trade unions and secure high standards of living, economic security and social stature for workers.

It was produced by the UAW.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Japan signs surrender, officially ending World War II; Union forces occupy Atlanta during the Civil War; A great fire ravages medieval London; Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh dies; Wreckage of the Titanic found.

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.

Miguel de Cervantes

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When we vote in local elections, we vote directly for our local and state representatives – one man, one vote. But for the most powerful office in the country, President of the United States, that rule does not apply. He is elected by the electoral college, winning the majority of American votes does not count. Chris Hayes explains why the weirdest thing about the Electoral College is that if it wasn’t specifically in the Constitution, it would be unconstitutional.

“If you run for sheriff or mayor or governor or senator, you win if you get the most votes. That’s it. That’s the principle,” Hayes noted. “There is one exception, president of the United States.”

“Now, there are all kinds of people who will tell you this is good for all sorts of reasons — and they’re all wrong,” he argued.

“And that brings us back to Dan Crenshaw, who says that the nature of American constitutional government is because we are a republic, not a democracy, the 51% can’t boss around the 49%. But what he and his party are advocating is a world in which the 49% boss around the 51%,” Hayes said, to massive applause.

“And that is both anti-democratic and perverse. America is a democracy, and if one person, one vote means anything at all, it’s time to do something totally radical, and that is this. Run the presidential election the way we run every other election. The person with the most votes wins,” Hayes concluded.

Darkside – blink-182

Frosted Flakes – Quality Control with Migos

One Thing Right – Marshmello and Kane Brown