Pretend to be conservative, I think.

Edit: I replied from my inbox. As it turns out, I’m not as original as I thought.

Well, like, are they supposed to bike or drive?

Who is coming back?! Where are they coming back to?

It’s not Leatherface, is it? Watch out Big Mike!

I don’t think we’re talking about the same kind of crime here.

I’m talking about theft, you’re talking about financial terrorism.

There’s no grift to be had in destroying the value of the currency you are attempting to steal unless you transform it into something else that has or retains value after your crime has been committed, such as gold, other currency, or stable crypto (the latter two of which are easily exchangeable for crypto before the dump happens).

I think even Trump might understand that if he steals all the dollars but that means all the dollars will no longer have value, that he will no longer have valuable dollars.

We’re not dealing with the Joker here. We’re dealing with a 80’s businessman who fried his brain with coke and laundered Russian money and is stuck in those glory days as he descends into dementia. Now he’s a puppet with his hand in too many cookie jars, and an hand or two in his own ‘cookie jar’ and all he wants is MORE.

I’m talking an actual transfer of federal funds and pretending it’s legit, like the proposed strategic crypto reserve/sovereign wealth fund.
The previous ones were personal grift, paid for by willing idiots.

They could still actually rob Fort Knox and directly invest the U.S. treasury into a crypto pump and dump scheme.

I think Ukraine can only pull off a big attack like this a few times. Not because they’re incapable, or Russia, now aware of the method, can defend against it, but because each attack generates data. The more data you have, the greater the ability to analyze and spot patterns, which puts Ukrainian operators at risk.

Although it would be excellent if another attack happened very soon against another relatively irreplaceable Russian asset. But a campaign of smaller scale harassment throughout the country would suffice to harm morale and keep supply constraints, well, constrained.

Disclaimer, I’m just a rando with a search habit. Not like, a professional analyst.

It’s maybe not the dumbest to use them in this way - their carrying capacity meant fewer sorties per pound of munition delivered.

But also, it seems like Russia is picking and choosing how it deploys resources, presumably so its more advanced jets do not have to be put at risk (there are various reasons for why that may be so - the linked article discusses them).

The other side of it is that keeping the strategic fleet demonstrably in use signals to other countries that Russia may be able to back up their nuclear saber-rattling.

I dug a bit deeper still after the above comment, and my additional findings ostensibly seem to contradict your sentiments, but actually lend credence to them.

Quoting myself (roughly) -

It looks like they ran out of ATACMS in March and the U.S. has been sending the significantly less effective GLSDB as a replacement.

Well, shit.

Biden did that.

I’ll have at recalibrate my thoughts a bit.

They were convicted of conspiracy in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2022. […] They are being held at a prison in Colorado

The state would have to charge them with something the Feds didn’t already charge them with (due to double indemnity laws), then issue warrants for their arrest, and hope they get arrested or turn themselves in. One of them doesn’t live in Michigan. I can’t imagine the other would move back. They could be extradited by another state, but then they have to be retried.

Still better than nothing, at least if they do get a bullshit pardon, they would maybe always have the specter of criminal charges hanging over them, and would fail any comprehensive background check. But they wouldn’t be in a cell in the interim.

Ah, sadly, no. That story was cut from the broadcast because we found a story about a dog that rides a motorcycle in Sioux City.
“Market research” by our corporate owners says that white collar crime doesn’t bring in the advertising dollars unless the victims are other wealthy people.