u/D-R-AZ

Excerpt:

It appears that what he wants is for the Iran war to spread to the United States, so that he can then live through a 9/11 himself and enjoy a burst of popularity. What else, after all, can he hope to gain from the war? All that is left is weakness brought by weakness, which in the setting of a disaster that he himself provokes he can hope to pantomime for a domestic audience as strength. In his speech at the UN, he kept connecting Iran to the elections. In two recent campaign appearances, he fantasized about Iran destroying American cities. I do not believe that anything of the sort will happen, since Iran has no reason to give Trump a gift. But it does show where Trump’s mind is: the weakness of a lost war can translate into the weakness of failing to prevent terror, and he can then hope to somehow be the man of the hour again.

"A nation does not survive because its most fortunate individuals succeed in protecting themselves. It survives because enough of its people and institutions preserve the cooperative arrangements upon which the nation depends."

Lead Paragraph:

NATO’s Military Committee visited Kyiv for the first time in eight years, bringing together military representatives from all 32 NATO member states for talks with Ukraine’s military leadership, according to NATO Military Committee Chair Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone on October 7.

Lead Lines:

In mid-September, the Trump administration bestowed press pool status on reporter—sorry, “reporter”—Beni Rae Harmony as she traveled to Ireland to cover the president.

Then, on September 26, the 24-year-old(!) Harmony, who worked for the network Real America’s Voice, took CNN’s spot on the presidential plane after Trump refused to let the network onboard.

Last Friday, Harmony switched sides, going from covering the White House as a member of the press to serving Trump as his newest assistant press secretary.

There are so many questions here, but let’s start with the most obvious one: Do you think she’ll get back pay?

Excerpt:

“None of this means the Irkutsk pathogen will cause a pandemic. But the response clearly indicates that Russia believes an epidemic is possible - and that the responsible agent is likely a pandemic weapon or otherwise embarrassing for the government,” he added.

Excerpt:

So with a wave this real, and this big, and probably still getting bigger, even South Carolina could be swept away. And so Trump is living a life of noisy desperation.

Thoreau remarks later on in Walden that “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” Trump is not a man of wisdom. He will say and do desperate things over the next four weeks, and over the next two years. So while enjoying the change in circumstances that is making Trump desperate, we should also prepare for the dangers we’ll face from a desperate and unhinged megalomaniac in control of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States.

Excerpt:

It’s a depressing political reality that the clearest driver of Americans’ unhappiness isn’t the Trump family’s naked corruption or immigration agents shooting people in the streets, but rather the cost of refueling one’s car. Yet recent elections have shown just how sensitive voters are to price increases (just ask Joe Biden and Kamala Harris). And after winning the White House back in part over higher prices, Trump’s decision to smash the bright red “make gas more expensive” button may have handed Democrats the biggest electoral gift they could’ve hoped for.

Excerpt:

Only 44% of adults ages 18 to 29 describe themselves as thriving, according to Gallup, 20 points lower than the high measured in 2010. Forty-five percent of adults 30 to 44 say the same; both figures have declined in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Excerpt:

“AI companies are not doing enough to secure their systems and protect the public from the harm they cause. That burden is falling onto everyone else, including smaller organizations,” Wikimedia said. “At a minimum, their systems should operate in a way that non-profit website owners like us can easily identify, and choose how they interact with our services.”

Observation:

A man who does not like to be corrected eventually gets rid of the people, institutions, and facts that can correct him.

Excerpt:

One of us is a historian, the other an engineer who spends his days inside the small discipline of observability, the science of inferring a system’s internal state from its outputs. The distinction that discipline draws is between monitoring and seeing. Monitoring tells you the server is powered on. Observability tells you whether it is doing its work as intended. A system that loses observability has not necessarily failed; rather, it has become unknowable. It may be running correctly, or it may have begun to fail an hour ago. From the outside, there is no way to tell. In airplane terms, an altimeter goes dark, and whether the aircraft is at 30,000 feet or 600 is a question that admits no answer until impact.

That is how the systems analyst sees Trump 2.0. Monitors all over the place are going dark.

No matter what happens in 2028, an administration committed to evidence-based governance will inherit a shattered dashboard. There will be no baseline for the toxins in the air, and no honest measure of what a generation of students lost. The state will have gained the power to assert and to impose, with no feedback loop left to tell any of us how things are actually going. The rest of us will live with the consequences. The record by which those consequences might have been known will never exist.

Excerpt:

Just as Iran exerted control over the Strait of Hormuz, which was an open waterway before the U.S.-Israeli bombardment began in February, the Houthis are now menacing the Bab al-Mandab. The narrow passage between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa is another vital waterway for regional energy exports. In the past two weeks, the Houthis have captured two crucial islands in the area, giving Iran and its ally effective control over two choke points—and over global gas prices.

Excerpt:

The debacle in Iran, which is poised to drag down Republicans in the upcoming midterms, underscored some hard truths about America’s new standing in the world. Since beginning his second term, Trump’s message to most other nations, including longtime friends, was that they were largely on their own. He left the bulk of Ukraine’s defense to Europe while he and his negotiators continued to sweet-talk Russia. He alienated allies by launching trade wars. He warned of further military intervention in his own hemisphere. He happily accepted gifts and business investments from Gulf states, only to ignore their pleas to not attack Iran. He allowed Elon Musk’s DOGE to slash foreign aid and other U.S. soft-power programs around the globe. Nearly everywhere, America’s influence is shrinking.

Lead Paragraph:

The second administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has unleashed an assault on the world that America made, abdicating U.S. leadership of an open, rule-bound international system.1 Whereas his predecessors invested in and supported multilateral institutions and alliances, Trump largely dismisses these as a hindrance to the untrammeled exercise of U.S. power, the pursuit of relative advantage, and the rights of Americans. He has adopted a more transactional posture, leveraging U.S. global dominance to advance short-term national interests and defend against alleged incursions on U.S. national sovereignty. Consistent with this view, his administration has withdrawn from or reduced support for multiple international organizations, treaties, and initiatives perceived to be at odds with its “America First” agenda. He has also rejected any international legal limits on the use of U.S. military force, most obviously in Iran.2

Excerpt:

This new wrinkle in the Harp story, though, suggests that she’s not just a human Band-Aid for Trump’s insecurities — she is actively dangerous. It’s unclear why she apparently showed the president clips that were guaranteed to anger him, but the result is that he launched the most serious assault in his ongoing war on the free press and the First Amendment. The episode shows that Harp isn’t just there to flatter and soothe Trump; she is also willing to get him worked up so that his terrible decision-making skills deteriorate even further.

Excerpt:

For years, the strategy among U.S. allies was to wait President Trump out. Now many are preparing for a world in which the United States is no longer indispensable—not simply during Trump’s presidency but afterward as well, regardless of who occupies the White House. They are building military capabilities, diversifying trade, developing new domestic industries, and forging relationships that reduce their dependence on Washington.

Excerpts:

The ICE officers, who were driving unmarked vehicles, attempted to pull Garcés Pérez over, but he drove away, nearly striking one of the officers, according to one of the DHS officials. The official said the incident was recorded by the body camera of the ICE officer’s partner. The officers followed Garcés Pérez in their vehicles. The officer without the body camera found Garcés Pérez and attempted to detain him. When Garcés Pérez attempted to drive away again, that officer pulled his gun and fired, striking Garcés Pérez in the back, both of the officials told me.

ICE training instructs officers that the use of deadly force against a fleeing suspect is not permissible unless there is an imminent risk of harm to law-enforcement personnel or the public.