VIDEO: This Democrat Senator Is Really Trying Hard to Dodge Questions on His Corruption Charges.

He could stand to take some lessons from Nathan Thurm.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 55 or Older? Here’s How to Save Big on Your Phone Plan.

FIGHTING TO LOSE: Tech Blacklisting of Counterjihadists is What Muslim Brotherhood Seeks: Sabotage by Our Hands.

NO. Gawker has been gone for a year. We’ve never needed it more than now.

PERHAPS YOU CAN BORROW SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE: ‘Anyone Taping Me?’ Ellison Reveals How Pelosi Really Feels About Single-Payer.

Ellison is having quite the run lately, isn’t he?

PLANES WITH BENEFITS: How Buying Light Attack Fleet Would Help USAF’s Pilot Shortage.

The problem the Air Force faces is not recruitment. It’s that the service is currently producing more pilots than it can absorb into operational units, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mike Holmes explained here in an Aug. 17 interview. In other words, many pilots who complete undergraduate pilot training (UPT) have no spot available for them in the combat Air Force. Some end up flying T-38s here as aggressor aircraft for the F-22 Raptor until a spot opens up on a fourth- or fifth-generation aircraft, Holmes said.

“We are making more lieutenants than we can comfortably absorb right now in the squadrons, so if we had another place to put them we’d start feeding them in there,” Holmes said.

A light attack fleet would provide another track for new fighter pilots, allowing them to gain critical combat experience and accumulate hundreds of flight hours in a short amount of time, Holmes said. Part of the appeal for new pilots would be that the light attack fighters would likely see more combat and fly more hours overall than the high-end fighters, because they are so much cheaper to fly.

“We’d use it as a way to season new pilots,” Holmes explained. “Some of them would choose to stay in that airplane because they liked it and they liked the mission. A lot of them then would move on into one of our other fighter aircraft that would enter the squadron as an experienced fighter pilot but new in that aircraft.”

As I wrote last week, “less bureaucratic bullcrap, more flight hours,” would go a long way towards mitigating the Air Force’s pilot retention problem. The light attack fleet would certainly help with the second part of that.

WELL, IS HE? Lawmakers Want to Know if Sessions Is Going After Affirmative Action.

SHOCKER: Man Claims to Eat Electricity Instead of Food.

PROCUREMENT: Northrop, Boeing Win Initial Deal to Replace Land-Based Nuclear ICBMs.

After the 36-month risk reduction phase, a single company will be chosen for the engineering and manufacturing development in 2020.

“We are moving forward with modernization of the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad,” said Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said. “Our missiles were built in the 1970s. Things just wear out, and it becomes more expensive to maintain them than to replace them. We need to cost-effectively modernize,” she said in the release.

“As others have stated, the only thing more expensive than deterrence is fighting a war. The Minuteman III is 45 years old. It is time to upgrade,” added Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein.

The Air Force is responsible for two out of the three legs of the nuclear triad. It expects to deploy GBSD in the late 2020s.

There’s some debate on whether we still need a land-based ICBM force when our submarine-based SLBM nukes are nearly as accurate, but advances in computing technology could rob our “boomer” fleet of its invisibility.

IT’S ON: Breitbart Slams Trump ‘Flip-Flop’ on Afghanistan.

Gail Wynand could not be reached for comment.

BIG WORDS: Taliban Vow Jihad with ‘Lofty Spirits,’ ‘Graveyard for the American Empire’ After Trump Speech.

If Trump is serious about really loosening up the Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan, then maybe the old Mike Tyson quote is apropos here: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

DAVE MAJUMDAR: The U.S. Navy’s Greatest Enemy Might Be Exhaustion.

“The U.S. combat fleet is already over-stretched,” Seth Cropsey, director of the Center for American Seapower at the Hudson Institute told The National Interest.

“Being short of two Aegis-equipped DDGs that provide ballistic missile defense while North Korea is threatening to launch ballistic missiles at local U.S. targets or allies is deeply unhelpful and regrettably timed. The overall impact on the Navy should be measured not only in the loss of sailors’ lives and unavailability of the ships as they are repaired but in the possibility that requirements have exceeded capabilities so far that the training needed to avoid such accidents has been impaired.”

Bryan McGrath, managing director of the naval consultancy FerryBridge Group, agreed with Cropsey’s assessment.

“Two fewer DDGs—I believe both of which are BMD equipped—leaves a sizable hole in a fleet that is already too small for what is being asked of it in the Western Pacific,” McGrath told The National Interest.

“I imagine that the Navy will have to move ships out of their regular cycles from Hawaii and CONUS [continental United States] to cover down on Pacific requirements.”

It will not be easy to cover for the loss of the two destroyers, explains Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“With two FDNF (Forward Deployed Naval Forces) DDGs out, the Navy would either need to forego some operations, work the remaining 10 cruisers and destroyers harder, or bring ships from Hawaii or CONUS to cover for them,” Clark told The National Interest.

Indeed, the fact that the Navy is forcing its fleet to do more with fewer ships to perform its global mission might have contributed to both collisions.

The value of our seaborne trade increases every year, but the oceans remain the same size and our Navy has shrunk considerably.

EVERYTHING IS NOT PROCEEDING QUITE AS ARTHUR C. CLARKE HAS FORESEEN: Scientists Say It’s Raining Diamonds on Neptune and Uranus.

(Classical reference in the headline.)

GOP REP: Virginia Governor May Have Fanned Flames in Charlottesville to Use It as an Election Issue in 2018 or 2020.

PERHAPS SARAH HOYT WILL LET ME BORROW HER SHOCKED FACE: Renewable Energy Is Not as Clean as You Think.

Solar and wind combined account for barely a fifth of electricity generation define as renewable. More than 70 percent of it comes from hydropower.

That’s according to International Energy Agency numbers for 2015, the latest figures available. Hydro isn’t the only surprising energy source dominating renewable energy stats: In the U.S., Canada, the EU and China, as well as the global average, more power is generated from biofuels (such as the combustion of wood pellets in power plants or burning off landfill gas) than from solar panels.

So when talking about renewable power, the media might need to change their stock images from turbines and panels to hydroelectric dams and burning logs.

Save the planet. Build a dam.

JUST FIVE MORE MINUTES, THEY SWEAR: Wake Up — Mitch & Paul! Stop Snoozing, Keep Your Promises.

GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK MOSTLY: Who Owns the Internet?

BRUCE BAWER: In Britain, They’re Still Ignoring the Islamic Roots of ‘Grooming’ Gangs.

THEY DO NOT HOLD TO THAT: Joss Whedon fan site shuts down after ex-wife’s critical essay.

The popular Joss Whedon fan site announced Monday it is “closing down” and will become a read-only site “at some stage” in the future. The site was a discussion board hub for all things related to The Avengers director and Firefly showrunner, who has inspired a passionate and loyal fan community that few writer-producers in Hollywood can match.

Recently, Whedon — who has supported and espoused feminist causes and created strong female characters throughout his career — has been under fire among some fans after his ex-wife, Kai Cole, wrote a guest blog for The Wrap alleging her former husband is a “hypocrite preaching feminist ideals.”

The two were married in the 1990s, separated in 2012 and finalized their divorce in 2016. Cole accused her ex of a “secret affair” on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and claimed Whedon “hid multiple affairs and a number of inappropriate emotional ones that he had with his actresses, co-workers, fans, and friends.” Cole said she wrote the blog “to let women know that he is not who he pretends to be.” Whedon issued a statement saying the blog “includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations,” but also that he won’t comment “out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife.”

Whedon is a talented writer and director of female-empowerment and libertarian themes, but that’s all fantasy and science fiction.

FRED KAPLAN: Killing Terrorists Is Not a Strategy.

For now at least I’ll defer to Gen. George S. Patton: “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week,” and hope that Ralph Peters is wrong — even though on these things he usually isn’t.

UNWRITING HISTORY: Kasich Administration Quietly Removes Painting of Confederate General from State Park.

General John Hunt Morgan was memorialized for his failed raid into Ohio, which for thinking Ohioans might be something to celebrate.

SEMPER FORTIS, BUT NOT TODAY: Navy to Pause Operations, Review Collisions, With 10 Missing.

Navy Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, made the announcement about the operational pause during a nearly four-minute video message posted on Facebook Monday morning. Adm. Richardson said he also ordered a broader investigation.

“I directed an operational pause be taken in all of our fleets around the world,” Adm. Richardson said. “I want our fleet commanders to get together with their leaders and their commands to ensure that we are taking all appropriate immediate actions to ensure safe and effective operations around the world.”

Such a pause applies to operations and patrols of the Navy’s six fleets. Specifics of the pause are at the discretion of fleet commanders, officials said.

The loss of ten sailors and the disabling of a warship is serious. An “operational pause” for the entire US Navy is more serious — and lends some credence to theories that the Navy’s recent mishaps might be the result of a sort-of dress rehearsal for a digital Pearl Harbor.

THIS SEEMS WISE: Bergdahl Chooses to Have Trial Heard by Judge and Not Jury.

Bergdahl’s lawyers told the court in a brief filing last week that their client chose trial by judge alone, rather than a panel of officers. He faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy at his trial scheduled for late October at Fort Bragg. The latter carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Defense attorneys declined to comment on the decision. But they previously questioned whether Bergdahl could get a fair trial by jury because of negative comments President Donald Trump made on the campaign trail.

Earlier this year the judge, Army Col. Jeffery R. Nance rejected a defense request to dismiss the case over Trump’s criticism of Bergdahl.

Potential jurors had already received a questionnaire including questions about their commander in chief, but defense attorneys weren’t allowed to ask jurors if they voted for Trump.

There don’t seem to be many skulls left where Trump isn’t living rent-free.

GOOD ADVICE: If you’re going to punch Nazis, first make sure they’re actually Nazis.

Want even better advice? Going around punching people, even strenuously bad people, just because you disagree with them, is kinda fascist.

CONDENSED TRAVEL EDITION: Liz Sheld’s morning brief.