THIS IS NOT NEWS TO INSTAPUNDIT READERS: Russia’s new Su-57 ‘stealth’ fighter already looks like a disappointment.

Russia first flew the Su-57 in 2010, demonstrating that it would enter the race towards fifth-generation aircraft after the US revolutionized aerial combat with the F-22, and later the F-35.

But in the years since, the Su-57 has failed to present a seriously viable future for Russian military aviation. Russia already fields some of the most maneuverable planes on earth. It has serious firepower in terms of missiles and bombs, and long-distance bombers and fighters. But what Russia doesn’t have is a stealth jet of any kind.

While Russian media calls the Su-57 an “aerial ghost,” a senior scientist working on stealth aircraft for the US called it a “dirty aircraft,” with many glaring flaws that would light up radars scanning for the plane.

Additionally, two of the plane’s most fearsome weapons, the Kh-35UEm a subsonic, anti-ship cruise missile, and the nuclear-capable BrahMos-A supersonic cruise missile, can’t fit in the internal weapons bay and must hang from the wings, as the Diplomat’s Franz-Stefan Gady reports.

Since a stealth plane needs every single angle of the jet to perfectly contour to baffle radars, hanging weapons off the wings absolutely kills stealth.

The United States has produced an entire range of stealth jets — attack, air superiority, multirole, and heavy bomber — since the F-117 first flew more than 35 years ago. Our adversaries have been trying, and failing, to play catch-up ever since.

THE HILL: Ukraine hacker cooperating with FBI in Russia probe: report.

A hacker in Ukraine who goes by the online alias “Profexer” is cooperating with the FBI in its investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, The New York Times is reporting.

Profexer, whose real identity is unknown, wrote and sold malware on the dark web. The intelligence community publicly identified code he had written as a tool used in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee ahead of last year’s presidential election.

The hacker’s activity on the web came to a halt shortly after the malware was identified.

The Times, citing Ukrainian police, reported Wednesday that the individual turned himself into the FBI earlier this year and became a witness for the bureau in its investigation. FBI investigators are probing Russian interference efforts and whether there was coordination between associates of President Trump’s campaign and Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller is heading the investigation.

Hmm. According to The Nation, there was no hacking, just an insider leak. Apparently the FBI doesn’t think so. Or the NYT is wrong.

WASHINGTON, JACKSON, AND… LENIN? Find out what they all have in common in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

WELL, THEY’RE NOT THE FIRST TO HAVE DONE SO: The VA State Police basically called Gov. Terry McAuliffe a liar.

AWFUL: Fed Officials Confront New Reality: Low Inflation and Low Unemployment.

SHEP SMITH: We couldn’t find a Republican willing to come on and defend Trump.

“Our booking team — and they’re good — reached out to Republicans of all stripes across the country today,” Smith said on his show “Shepard Smith Reporting.”

“Let’s be honest, Republicans don’t often really mind coming on Fox News Channel. We couldn’t get anyone to come and defend him here because we thought, in balance, someone should do that,” he continued.

“We worked very hard at it throughout the day, and we were unsuccessful. And of those who are condemning the president’s condemnable actions, I’ve not heard any prominent leaders, former presidents, members of the House or the Senate use his name while speaking in generalities,” he said.

Smith’s show isn’t my cup of tea, but finding GOP surrogates isn’t usually a problem for Fox’s bookers.

RUBICON: WAPO OP-ED OPENLY CALLS FOR POLITICAL VIOLENCE.

EUGENE VOLOKH: “I’ve been struck by the similarity between recent calls for suppressing white supremacist speech and past calls for suppressing Communist speech.” “Communists, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates — I can’t stand them. They are supporters of ideologies of slavery and murder. They are losers, who lost for very good reason. But their speech should be protected, I think; and the cases for stripping protection from such speech have always been very similar.”

Well, as Ed Driscoll says, “the American Left morphed into the John Birch Society so gradually that I barely noticed.”

We used to make fun of the 1950s advice at my university to professors not to grow beards, as that might make them look like Communists. Compared to the degree of speech/conduct/appearance control at most universities today, that seems quaint.

CONFIRMATION: Ukraine’s space agency: North Korea engine identical to ours.

This is a followup to Monday’s unconfirmed report that North Korea is getting its missiles from a Ukrainian factory “with historical ties to Russia’s missile program.”

TIM KAINE HAS HARSH WORDS FOR VIOLENT THUGS — NOT INCLUDING HIS SON WHO WAS ARRESTED FOR VIOLENT DISRUPTION OF A PEACEFUL RALLY.

IT’S ON: Anonymous Plans Ops to Take Down Confederate Monuments at 11 Sites Friday.

K.C. JOHNSON ON AMHERST: Campus sexual assault policies are unfair to the accused. This case shows how.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ignited a firestorm in recent months after signaling that she might pull back Obama administration policies intended to protect victims of sexual assault at college campuses. But amid the intense criticism directed toward DeVos, one lawsuit out of Amherst College demonstrates just how unfairly the Obama policies can operate for students wrongly accused of sexual misconduct.

On a factual basis, the Amherst case — settled out of court this month between the university and an expelled student accused of sexual assault — is one of the most egregious since the Obama administration implemented its policy in 2011. The lawsuit revealed documents that the public almost never gets to see, such as the full investigative file, the transcript of the disciplinary hearing and other material from the campus process.

As a result, this case is perhaps the most comprehensive documentation of any single campus sexual assault adjudication in recent years.

I’m pleasantly surprised that the Washington Post ran it.

AT AMAZON, save big on bestselling Pet Supplies.

Plus, deals in cleaning.

THIS IS GREAT, AS LONG AS THEY REIN IN THE JUNIOR ROBESPIERRES: UC Berkeley chancellor unveils ‘Free Speech Year’ as right-wing speakers plan campus events.

Carol T. Christ, UC Berkeley’s 11th chancellor and the first woman to lead the nation’s top public research university, unveiled plans Tuesday for a “Free Speech Year” as right-wing speakers prepare to come to campus.

Christ said the campus would hold “point-counterpoint” panels to demonstrate how to exchange opposing views in a respectful manner. Other events will explore constitutional questions, the history of Berkeley’s free speech movement and how that movement inspired acclaimed chef Alice Waters to create her Chez Panisse restaurant.

“Now what public speech is about is shouting, screaming your point of view in a public space rather than really thoughtfully engaging someone with a different point of view,” Christ said in an interview. “We have to build a deeper and richer shared public understanding.”

Reminder: It’s Wrong To Physically Attack People For What They Say, Even If What They Say Makes You Very Angry.

METAPHOR ALERT: Protesters in Atlanta Vandalize ‘Peace Monument’ After Mistaking It for Confederate Symbol.

REGULATION RETARDS PROGRESS: FDA chief says drug makers are gaming the system to slow generic competition; vows action.

ROD DREHER EXPLAINS HOW ‘DIVERSITY’ IS TEARING AMERICA APART:

It is not easy to live in a pluralistic democracy. Left-wing identitarians and those who empower them — I’m especially looking at you, university administrators and corporate managers — are making it much harder. A workplace where people have to be on edge for fear that they will be reported to Human Resources for microaggressing someone by engaging in “lookism” is a place that, sooner or later, is going to blow.

And so is a society whose imagination has been formed by this malevolent catechism.

Read the whole thing.

HEY, WHEN DO THE FDR STATUES COME DOWN? SHOULD WE TAKE HIM OFF THE DIME? RENAME THE ISLAND? In addition to that whole Japanese internment unpleasantness (highly problematic, old chap), Flashback: FDR Appoints KKK Member to U.S. Supreme Court. Hugo Black Came From The Klu Klux Klan Wing of the Democrat Party.

SUMMER FLOPS THREATEN TO PUSH HOLLYWOOD BOX OFFICE TO LOWEST LEVEL IN DECADE.

Christian Toto writes that there’s a one theory missing from most of the MSM’s takes on my the domestic Hollywood box office tanked this summer, in addition to how craptacular most of their product has been. “And, of course, it involves the man who’s been sucking the oxygen out of the news cycle for the past seven months…Hollywood’s insane reaction to Trump’s ascent may be coaxing customers to skip the multiplex this summer. Here’s the rub: Many Americans who lean right, support Trump or check both boxes are aghast at what Hollywood has been up to for the past year. They’ve read the tweets, seen the interviews, watched the smug videos telling them how to vote and heard stars directly attack their candidate.”

As wide swatches of the MSM and ESPN have already discovered, when you display open contempt for your half your audience,  don’t be surprised when they go elsewhere for their media.

CHANGE: Why 40+ Is The New Age Of Fitness. But don’t think you’re going to get a “Photoshop physique.” “Believe me, you will never look like the guy in the magazine, the guy in the magazine doesn’t even look like the guy in the magazine.”

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T WORKING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: “Dallas’ Perot Museum of Nature and Science has scheduled a party for the upcoming, very rare solar eclipse set to cross the country Aug. 21. One mom’s comment on the Facebook post for the event, however, drew almost as much attention as the expected phenomenon itself. Although the comment has since been deleted, the Houston Chronicle reports that one woman asked, ‘Most kids go back to school that day. Can it be done on the weekend?’”

(Auto-play video at link, alas.)

COULD ROBERT E. LEE ROAD IN AUSTIN, TEXAS BECOME ROBERT PLANT ROAD?: I blog, you decide. What hath Led Zeppelin wrought?

DAVID BLANKENHORN: Charlottesville, Trump, And Our Bitter Politics.

Like so many, I’m saddened and deeply troubled by what happened in Charlottesville this past weekend, and its aftermath. And I also worry that more argument about it at this point is unlikely to do much good and may even do harm. Yet silence, somehow, feels cowardly.

Let’s review the basic story to date. An innocent woman lies dead, murdered. Far-right hate groups, for decades essentially exiled from anything but the most marginal participation in our public life, are now being discussed around the world (whether accurately or not) as a viable and perhaps growing presence among us. And the polarization of our society, much of it stoked by our market-share obsessed media—the rancor, the bitterness, the frantic hyperbole, the relentless either/or framing of issues, our fear of and anger at each other—appears only to have been increased by Charlottesville and its aftermath.

I agree with, or at least can understand with some sympathy, many things President Trump said. Left-wing provocateurs do exist; and they, too, use telegenic violence to recruit new members and raise money. Labels such as “alt-right” or “neo-Nazi” probably don’t describe everyone who showed up for the rally. There is more than one side to the issue of the Confederate statues and monuments; indeed there are at least three sides, since some African-American members of a Charlottesville city commission formed by the Mayor to consider the issue favored keeping the statues partly as “teaching moments” for the future.

The President also said yesterday that neo-Nazis and white nationalists “should be condemned totally,” a sentiment for which I’m grateful and with which I fully agree—but which also seems both forced and late.

But here’s the heart of the matter, for me. The great majority of Americans on both sides of the political aisle recognize that, in this land we all love and want to make better, racism exists. It’s deep and it’s serious. It dishonors us, and we need to do everything we can to erase it and put it behind us.

In that light consider: The rally in Charlottesville was planned and carried out by openly racist groups in pursuit of openly racist objectives. These facts should and do cause the great majority of Americans to feel distress, embarrassment, regret, shame, remorse, anger, and a renewed determination to do all that we can to minimize this terrible thing that crawled out of the fever swamps this past weekend to highjack our attention. Almost all of us—liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats—know this and feel this in our bones.

Read the whole thing.

LINCOLN AND EISENHOWER COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT. This Is CNN: Guest Rules the GOP ‘Are’ Neo-Nazis, ‘Old Slave Owners’ Ignoring Lynchings.