(Russia's arsenal vs. the US's

Russian Yars RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile system drives during Victory Day parade to mark end of World War Two at Red Square in Moscow.Thomson Reuters)

"Russians made a really different design choice than we did," when it came to building ICBMs, said Lewis.

"Russia built nuclear weapons that are incremental improvements," or weapons that would need updating every decade or so.

On the other hand, Lewis said, "US nukes are like Ferraris: beautiful, intricate, and designed for high performance. Experts have said the plutonium pits will last for 100s of years." Indeed the US's stocks of Minuteman III ICBMS, despite their age, are "exquisite machinery, incredible things."

"Russia's nuclear weapons are newer, true, but they reflect the design philosophy that says ‘No reason to make it super fancy because we’ll just rebuild it in 10 years.’"

The philosophical differences don't end there.

"Russians love to put missiles on trucks," said Lewis, while the US prefer land-based silos, which present a reliable target and lack mobility. During the height of the Cold War, the US did at one point try a truck-launched ICBM, but US safety and durability requirements far exceeded that of the Russians rendering the platform unreasonable.

"If you look at the truck [the US] built for missiles, it’s ten times more expensive. It's radiation hardened and way less vulnerable," explained Lewis. "We gold plated the thing," he joked.

Best player in college football'? Maybe ... but there's no question Jabrill Peppers is the most versatile

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Jabrill Peppers came off the sideline with the Michigan offensive unit last Saturday against Penn State and asked quarterback Wilton Speight a question:

“OK, what I got?”

Speight pulled out the oldest playbook in football – the palm of his hand. On that, he diagrammed Peppers’ role on the play: line up as a slot receiver, come in motion right to left, and we will fake a jet sweep to you.

This is how simple an increasingly complex game can be with the most versatile man in football. Turn the Big House into the world’s largest sandlot field, draw it up with an index finger and just watch him play.

Peppers did his job on that particular play – one of his many Michigan moonlighting jobs. His day job is outside linebacker, but in reality the redshirt sophomore has performed a dizzying 13 different positional tasks this season. There are more to come.

Since he set up Michigan’s first touchdown of the day with a 53-yard punt return, the Nittany Lions were highly attuned to Peppers’ sudden presence on offense. Thus when Speight faked the jet sweep to No. 5, much of the Penn State defense pursued the highly explosive decoy.

That left a lane up the middle for running back De’Veon Smith to gain 39 yards, jump-starting yet another scoring drive in a 49-10 Michigan rout.

By merely going in motion, Jabrill Peppers can change a game. Just put him on the field – anywhere – and big things tend to happen.

“Those eye-popping plays happen every day,” coach Jim Harbaugh said. “You give him something new, for example, whether it’s an offensive snap and know he hasn’t done it before, and then he goes out to practice and everybody is just looking like, ‘Nobody’s done it that well. Guys that play that position don’t do it that well.’

“Jabrill is really good at football. That’s kind of become what we say.”

Jabrill Peppers is really good at football – perhaps as good at it as anyone in the nation. And football has been good to him – as a release, as an escape, as a vehicle that has carried an angry boy to a happy place.

Hundreds Gather in 2nd Night of Protests After Police Shooting in California

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered for a second night at the scene of a fatal police shooting in El Cajon, California on Wednesday.

Protesters chanted slogans and engaged in rowdy and at times tense interactions with police and passersby, but remained mostly peaceful in the city of about 100,000 in San Diego County.

El Cajon has become the latest U.S. city to be roiled by a police shooting of a black man. Protests have erupted in recent weeks in Charlotte, North Carolina, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Sacramento, California, echoing the unrest seen in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and St. Paul Minnesota earlier this year and in Ferguson, Missouri in 2015.

Alfred Okwera Olango, 38, was shot and killed in El Cajon on Tuesday.

Police initially said they received a 911 call from Olango's sister, saying her brother was "not acting like himself." According to the caller, he was walking in traffic, endangering himself and motorists, police said. Two officers located Olango behind a restaurant, where they attempted to approach him.

Olango refused multiple instructions to remove his hand from his pocket, which caused one officer to draw his firearm, police said. Olango continued to ignore further commands and paced back and forth while officers tried talking to him, according to police.

At one point, Olango "rapidly drew an object from his front pants pocket, placed both hands together and extended them rapidly toward the officer, taking up what appeared to be a shooting stance," police said Tuesday. That's when one officer deployed his Taser and another fired his gun several times, striking Olango, according to police.

The object that a pulled from his pant pocket before being fatally shot by police was not a deadly weapon -- but a vape smoking device, the El Cajon olice Department said Wednesday evening.

"The vape has an all silver cylinder (Smok TFV4 MINI) that is approximately 1 inch diameter and 3 inches long that was pointed toward the officer," the police statement said. "The vape was collected as evidence from the scene."

Olango was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police.

El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells said in a press conference Tuesday afternoon that he had watched the video and "saw a man who was distraught" and in pain.

The mayor said Olango's sister indicated in the 911 call that he had a mental illness, adding that all officers in the El Cajon Police Department receive psychiatric training.

"There have been several questions about the Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PERT)," police said in Wednesday's statement.

"The El Cajon Police Department does have an agreement with Community Research Foundation/PERT which allows certified licensed clinicians to partner with police officers in the field in order to provide direct support for mental health calls."

Tragically, the police statement said that an officer teamed with a PERT clinician was on another call at the time of Tuesday's shooting and was not available.

You Do Not Want to Be On the Radar of the IRS Wealth Squad

The very rich are different from you and me. They even have their own IRS audit squad.

Saturday marks the start of the fourth quarter, a time of financial reckoning, of crashing toward quotas and scrambling to reach year-end targets. Corporations and individuals alike rush to cut the income tax they'll need to pay next year. Some go too far (or just miss things, or misunderstand what and how they need to report). The IRS collected $6.3 billion last year assessing taxpayers for underreported income. Among them are the big fish, honored with the IRS equivalent of a SWAT team.

It's called the Global High Wealth Industry Group, and it falls under the Internal Revenue Service's Large Business and International Division. It's also been called "The Wealth Squad" (PDF). The unit, launched in 2010, aims to "take a holistic approach in addressing the high wealth taxpayer population; to look at the complete financial picture of high wealth individuals and the enterprises they control, " according to a description in an IRS revenue manual. The unit's cases involve an individual's tax return "and related income tax returns where the individual has a controlling interest and significant compliance risk is deemed to exist." Things that can get sucked into these cases include "interests in partnerships, trusts, subchapter S corporations, C corporations, private foundations, gifts, and the like."

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Any audit of Donald Trump's tax returns, for example, would be by the Wealth Squad, said Charles Rettig, a principal with Hochman, Salkin, Rettig, Toscher & Perez, of Beverly Hills, and past chairman of the IRS Advisory Council.
What are these examinations like? Rettig once described them as "the audits from hell that your grandfather warned you about."  The teams involve "highly capable, experienced examination specialists, which include technical advisers to provide industry or issue-specialized tax expertise, specialists regarding flow-through entities (such as trusts, partnerships, LLCs), international examiners, economists to identify economic trends within returns, valuation experts and others," he said.

As of 2013, almost 25 percent of taxpayers whose adjusted gross income topped $10 million were audited. The Wealth Squad may aim higher. "I have a client with a net worth close to $1 billion, and their return was a small return for that group," said Rosalind Sutch, a certified public accountant at Philadelphia-based Drucker & Scaccetti. "They are super focused on, like, the top 50 percent of the 1 percent-ers."

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