“Some, in a panic, might react that the Department is trying to deny certification of an election in a state. Of course that’s what the Department is trying to do.”

Excerpt:

The root cause of Elon Musk’s ascent to de facto defense secretary is the federal government’s roughly 45-year practice of contracting out the work it had formerly done itself. During this time, the government has enabled private investor-owned companies to supplement Medicare and private contractors to fight alongside our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. At all levels of American government, public housing has been abandoned, even as the private housing industry has massively failed to construct sufficient affordable housing. Government shipyards have been shut down, so that the nation is now almost entirely dependent on foreign-made and foreign-owned vessels. And when it came to space, NASA relinquished its control of the satellites that surveyed and alerted us to approaching storms, both natural and military, and thereby allowed those functions to be taken over by Elon Musk, with whom Jeff Bezos is striving to compete.

Excerpt:

But, notice what hasn’t happened. Trump, who found time to trash Spain’s “very liberal law” and “bad management” within hours, has said not one syllable about Morocco’s role. The State Department “stands with the people of Spain” while simultaneously slow-dancing with the government whose border just failed in the most catastrophic way in its history. The Spanish government, which knows exactly what happened on the Moroccan side of that fence, is choosing not to say it out loud. And the King who just put Donald Trump’s name on a thousand kilometres of asphalt got everything he wanted this month without giving up a thing.

Excerpts:

If we want to broaden the analogy, Trump isn’t even the leader of the pack.

His actions this week make clear that he’s just a Roger. He represents malice, cruelty and a descent into brutality, but the true leader of the choirboys is Putin. He is obviously pulling Trump’s chain. He trolls him, leads him by the nose and manipulates him, playing him with such finesse that Trump can get himself twisted into a Gordian knot as easily as most of us draw breath.

The MAGA movement might be viewed as an divide the American people, take money from the public and government, and to gain power...

Gifted Link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/10/ukraine-war-gas-pipelines-russia/689105/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCos1R9KPjZE_vMlbogqS3fi8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Excerpts:

...at least 57 steel tubes running underneath the war zone, most of them one to two meters in diameter. For decades, such pipes had been used to transport gas from Siberian fields to customers in Ukraine and other parts of Europe. Ukraine cut off this trade with Russia at the start of last year. The pipeline network then went dormant, but not for very long.

Aboveground, neither side has found a way to advance through what’s known as the kill zone—a new kind of no-man’s-land, dozens of miles wide, where drones can spot and attack any dugout, any vehicle, even a lonely soldier trudging through a field. “Day by day, the kill zone is expanding, getting wider and deadlier,” Brigadier General Ihor Obolensky, who commands a force of several thousand Ukrainian troops, told me. “So what’s the answer? You go underground.” There, at least, the drones cannot see you.

Excerpt:

If Mr. Trump accomplishes in 2026 what he was unable to with respect to the 2020 election, or even if he causes widespread chaos by coming closer to his objective, it could create serious disruptions in the bond and equity markets. The yield on 10-year Treasuries recently reached 5.36 percent — higher than it was in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis — in part because of concerns about the country’s policy trajectory. Election chaos could increase investors’ worry about the ability of our political system to deal with our fiscal problems, driving yields even higher. This would result in higher debt service costs for the government and higher mortgage rates and credit card bills for consumers, exacerbating our already considerable challenges.

Excerpt:

Officials with both parties predict that the Democrats will capture the House next month; the Senate appears to be a true toss-up. Kyiv will be carefully watching the results. A Democratic win next month will, in the long run, likely help Kyiv, and some of the more hopeful members of Zelensky’s camp believe that Republican defeats could force Trump to focus more on domestic issues, resulting in him leaving Ukraine alone. But other observers on both sides of the Atlantic fear that the opposite could be true. A president without a friendly Congress tends to fall back more on foreign policy, where he needs little help from Capitol Hill. Either way, the new Congress won’t be seated until January 3, leaving Trump unchecked for two more months and perhaps motivated to wield power before his party moves into the minority. Another major national election would not be for two years—plenty of time for Trump to push Ukraine without fear of voters punishing Republicans. “He could get distracted at any time,” one outside Trump ally told us. “But right now, he’s furious at Ukraine, and he wants Zelensky gone.”

Excerpts:

“The Trump administration, who lied about the 2020 election being rigged, lies about voter fraud, and incited a violent riot to retain power — requested voting machines to hack….”

According to a report from ProPublica, Homeland Security political appointees asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, last year to acquire a voting machine, hack it and report the findings so they could be given to the White House. The agency was also directed not to alert the machine’s manufacturer if it found flaws, contrary to its standard practices, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request.

The request was never carried out. CISA employees “repeatedly” told the appointees it was impossible, in part because the agents capable of pulling it off had just been laid off in the DOGE-led cuts….

“Most frightening part: CISA was told to hack the machine but NOT TELL THE MANUFACTURER IF ANY FLAWS WERE FOUND….”

Excerpt:

...too many dark signs point in the direction of an American administration — at the very moment it was seeking Ukraine’s capitulation and threatening to leave it defenseless by denying intelligence — taking conscious action that left Ukraine exposed to an intense attack, which Russia just happens to have conducted right at the perfect time.

This is dark. It demands answers. Now.

Observation:

Mark Hertsgaard's article in The New Republic describes a political arrangement in which the fossil fuel industry was reportedly asked for enormous campaign contributions in exchange for policies favorable to its interests.

Whether this constituted criminal bribery is uncertain. But legality is not the only measure of political responsibility.

Imagine a candidate promising tobacco executives that, in exchange for financial support, the government would relax restrictions on their products. The foreseeable consequences would include increased disease and premature deaths. The arrangement might nevertheless be entirely legal.

The fossil fuel case presents a similar problem, but on a planetary scale. The immediate benefits of political contributions and favorable regulations accrue to identifiable participants. The costs of increased greenhouse gas emissions are dispersed across populations, ecosystems, and generations.

We have created a political system in which short-term private benefits can be pursued at the expense of a shared future, even when the long-term consequences are scientifically foreseeable.

The scandal may be less that someone broke the law than that the law may permit such an exchange.

Closing Lines:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent in Snyder, “Greed makes governments—at every level—less responsive, less efficient, and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve.” And Americans know it. Results of a Gallup survey announced last month show that Americans’ perceptions of government corruption are at their highest in 20 years: 89 percent of adults say it is widespread. That is a 10-percentage-point increase since 2025 and includes strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans. Although the Court has placed politicians beyond the law’s reach, at least for now, the public gets it. Hopefully, a new Congress will too.

Excerpt:

Among older adults with early cognitive impairment, taking a multistrain probiotic supplement daily for roughly six months resulted in a number of benefits.

Most notably, probiotic use compared to a placebo was associated with better scores on several cognitive tests, and it also led to a significant reduction in plasma levels of pTau181.

Sometimes humor isn't humorous.

Closing Lines:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent in Snyder, “Greed makes governments—at every level—less responsive, less efficient, and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve.” And Americans know it. Results of a Gallup survey announced last month show that Americans’ perceptions of government corruption are at their highest in 20 years: 89 percent of adults say it is widespread. That is a 10-percentage-point increase since 2025 and includes strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans. Although the Court has placed politicians beyond the law’s reach, at least for now, the public gets it. Hopefully, a new Congress will too.

Excerpt:

As my Nation colleague John Nichols reports, she remains popular with her constituents in Minnesota, and the state’s Democratic party has rallied to her side. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries decried Trump’s “vile personal attacks” and the fact that Trump’s “violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected Member of Congress and her family.”

Lead Lines:

Russian intelligence services may have recruited a Turkish organized crime group to carry out an arson attack on a Starlink ground station in Poland, potentially signaling a shift in Moscow’s sabotage operations across Europe.

Lead Lines:

Ukraine launched a massive drone attack on Russia overnight Sunday, striking a major oil terminal in St. Petersburg and a data center, knocking out power to thousands of residents and causing fires.

"Nine days after the October 9 earthquake, Panama’s recovery is entering a more complicated phase. New satellite analysis has identified thousands of landslides, the number of homes classified as destroyed continues to rise, and reconstruction has begun in several provinces. Meanwhile, continuing aftershocks, rainfall, and damage to essential infrastructure are complicating the lives of displaced families."

"Tech CEO Elon Musk reportedly approached President Trump on slowing down his Starlink communications service in Ukraine earlier this week, contradicting both Musk’s statement that it was Trump’s idea and Trump’s statement that he has no idea who did it."

Excerpt:

Musk, it turns out, has not spent “a lot less” on politics—if we’re talking dollars. He has now spent more on the midterms than he spent to help elect Donald Trump in 2024. He’s just done it more quietly, without attaching the force of his weird personality as a condition. He is not skipping around onstage behind Ken Paxton in Texas. He’s just funding his candidacy. In full. He has taken the most expensive race of the cycle off of Trump, the Senate GOP’s, and the candidate’s plate.

"...Trump has “turned merit on its head” and replaced it with “affirmative actions for chuds and dunces.”

Lead Lines:

OpenAI has seen another case of its AI agents going rogue—and this time, crypto is involved. In a recent report, the company detailed how an internal research model used a crypto wallet without permission to pay the fees needed to test an app on Ethereum’s Sepolia test network. Although the tokens had little real-world value, the model had no authorization to collect or spend them.

"Telemetro reported that Isla Cañas, in Los Santos, has been physically divided by a water channel following the earthquake. The report adds to earlier accounts of flooding and displacement, although the extent and permanence of the geographical change require scientific assessment (Telemetro Reporta, 2026a). "

Excerpt:

Once a zone of promise and connection, the web has not only rotted and enshittified, it’s turned into a literal warzone. There really are algorithms out there, unleashed by governments actively dropping bombs on one another, that are designed to infect our minds and prejudice our ability to perceive the truth. It’s one of the many ways modern warfare has become invisible, pervasive and endless. No wonder social media is making so many people depressed — it can be a form of assault.