Month: October 2024

Homeowners outraged after major insurance company announces it won’t renew nearly 1,300 policies — here’s what you need to know

The Cool Down

Homeowners outraged after major insurance company announces it won’t renew nearly 1,300 policies — here’s what you need to know

Jenny Allison – October 23, 2024

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For many Oklahoma homeowners, November is ushering in the need to find new insurance coverage at a time when it seems many options are either too expensive, insufficient, or simply nonexistent.

What’s happening?

The reason behind their predicament is that Farmers Insurance has decided not to renew certain policies due to wildfire risk, Newsweek reported. Now, around 1,300 homeowners are scrambling to find new coverage, as their policies are expiring in November.

“As housing prices have swelled as have the costs to replace them, so too have insurance prices to cover potential damage,” Newsweek quoted Alex Beene, a financial literacy professor at the University of Tennessee at Martin.

“And when you mix those increased expenses with a home in an area that is highly likely to encounter some type of natural disaster, it’s forcing insurance providers to raise premiums to unfathomable heights or just drop coverage completely.”

Why is this pattern concerning?

While Farmers is choosing not to renew the selected policies due to wildfire risk, other states are seeing the same issue over risks of hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes, or other extreme weather-related events.

Unfortunately, scientists have found that these events are projected to grow even more intense as a direct result of our warming climate. And unless those temperatures slow down soon, wildfires and storms will continue to grow in severity.

For homeowners, losing coverage can mean having to enroll in a more expensive policy; in some cases, when no such policies are available or affordable, it can mean having to move towns or even states.

“Not only are they living in a property that won’t be covered in the case of damage, but the odds of them being able to relocate and sell that property go down considerably based on that same circumstance,” Beene told Newsweek.

What’s being done to protect homeowners?

Ideally, smaller insurance carriers in a market like Oklahoma’s could “come and pick up the pieces” left behind by a decision like this, Newsweek explained. But with carriers fearing increasing costs, many homeowners will instead see soaring premiums or be forced to use subpar providers.

Some states offer a state-managed plan, but it’s essentially a “last resort” arrangement and isn’t currently structured to withstand covering thousands of homeowners per state.

Homeowners left in the lurch after major insurance companies deem state ‘essentially uninsurable’: ‘Too many landscapes are ready to explode’

The Cool Down

Homeowners left in the lurch after major insurance companies deem state ‘essentially uninsurable’: ‘Too many landscapes are ready to explode’

Kaiyo Funaki – October 24, 2024

Another turbulent wildfire season in California has left residents without insurance for some of their most valuable assets.

What’s happening?

According to a report from Wired, insurance companies are either hiking up premiums for homeowners or dropping policies altogether in fire-prone California.

For example, Allstate refuses to accept new customers, while Liberty Mutual and State Farm have stopped renewing plans for tens of thousands of customers — some of whom had been with a company for decades and have resorted to state-operated coverage that is far more expensive.

“My whole family has been with State Farm for maybe 75 years. They sent us a letter in July saying that they would keep us if they could, but had no choice and were canceling in August,” Suzanne Romaine, a resident of northern California’s Siskiyou County, told Wired.

The issue has become so prevalent that several counties have requested state officials to declare a state of emergency for insurance prices. Climate research and technology nonprofit First Street Foundation has even regarded parts of the state as “essentially ‘uninsurable.'”

Why are the rising insurance rates driven by wildfires concerning?

As global temperatures continue to climb, so will the frequency and destruction of wildfires.

According to Wired, California has suffered $30 billion in losses from wildfires since 2017. In that same period, the state experienced nine of its 10 largest fires and 13 of its 20 most destructive ones.

This past summer, first responders battled the fourth-largest fire in state history — one that spawned fire tornadoes and contaminated water supplies.

“The drying out of the U.S. Southwest since 1980 has created so much kindling that too many landscapes are ready to explode,” Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College, said. “The planet is warming rapidly, which increases the desiccation of vegetation and establishes near impossible conditions in which to fight fire.”

These conditions — coupled with improper forest management, the state’s restrictive fire insurance regulations, and economic restraints — have created an untenable situation with few winners.

“If you suppress rates and try to tell companies that they can only charge X, and they start losing money, eventually they are going to say: ‘I’m going to be super picky at that artificially low premium,’ or ‘We’re not going to write anybody, and will come back when things get reasonable,'” said David Russell, an insurance and finance professor at California State University, Northridge. “And that’s what you’ve seen with State Farm.”

What’s being done about the rising insurance costs?

Wired noted that California has initiated its Sustainable Insurance Strategy, which would allow insurance companies to utilize wildfire risk models that rely on future projections, whereas previous models used only historical data.

The state will also create a public risk model that will prevent private models from overestimating the future risk of wildfire losses that result in overcharged customers. Additionally, California is expediting rate increase approvals to get private insurers to return.

“There are changes afoot that could bring insurance supply back to the market. This cannot happen fast enough,” Russell added.

The economy is a priority for Americans as they head to the polls. Here’s what’s really going on behind the numbers.

Business Insider

The economy is a priority for Americans as they head to the polls. Here’s what’s really going on behind the numbers.

Madison Hoff – October 24, 2024

  • Polling suggests the economy is important to voters in this year’s presidential election.
  • The economy is doing well across a wide variety of metrics.
  • But there are some weak points — like a growing federal debt load.

Election Day is less than two weeks away, and the economy is top of mind for many Americans.

Twenty-eight percent of likely voters in a poll from The New York Times and Siena College conducted from September 29 to October 6 said the economy was the “most important” issue for their vote, which was the highest share among all issues. A Pew Research Center survey from August 26 to September 2 found that among registered voters, 68% of Kamala Harris supporters and 93% of Donald Trump supporters said the economy was “very important” to their vote.

Additionally, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October found registered voters were nearly split on who they thought would do a better job handling different areas of the economy, such as jobs and unemployment.

The good news is that the economy is broadly doing pretty well these days.

“We’ve seen new highs for the stock market’s major averages, falling inflation, the Federal Reserve shifting into easing mode and a job market close to the level associated with full employment,” Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at the financial-services company Bankrate, said in recent commentary.

While data suggests the US economy is robust, Americans may not agree. The index of current economic conditions from the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers has stayed stubbornly low throughout the pandemic recovery.

Kurt Reiman, a cohead of ElectionWatch at UBS Global Wealth Management, told Business Insider that he didn’t think people felt “euphoric” about the economy. “Voters are reminded daily of the high price of goods and services — whether they’re renewing their car or home insurance or they’re going to the grocery store,” Reiman said.

They’re not necessarily off base. There are a few less-rosy data points out there, like rising long-term unemployment and a historically high level of federal debt.

As people get ready to head to polling locations or vote by mail, here’s how the US economy has been looking.

The unemployment rate has been under 5% since September 2021

After it rose to about 15% during the pandemic in April 2020, the unemployment rate has fallen to historically low rates. Even though the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3% in July — the highest rate since October 2021 — it has since dropped.

While unemployment remains low, the average time unemployed workers were out of a job increased to 22.6 weeks in September. So those out of work are spending more time looking for their next job.

Job gains have cooled but remain strong

The economy keeps adding jobs, but the labor market has slowed from its red-hot pandemic recovery.

The cooler-but-strong job growth is one indication that the US has continued to avoid a recession — the last one being in 2020.

There aren’t as many job openings per unemployed person as a few years ago

One key measure of the labor market has been turning against job seekers. The number of job openings per unemployed person rose to a record-high ratio in 2022 during the “Great Resignation” but declined to 1.1 openings per unemployed person in August and looks more like prepandemic levels.

It’s not impossible to find a job, though. Hamrick said there’s “still a reasonable chance that someone who’s going to be a job seeker will have a measure of success” depending on their sector and location.

The inflation rate has slowed dramatically

Based on year-over-year increases in the consumer price index, inflation has been mostly slowing down after spiking in 2021 and 2022.

While inflation has slowed, Hamrick said, consumers feel constrained by still high prices. However, Hamrick said, “Americans will continue to claw back some” lost buying power as long as inflation continues to settle down while the job market holds up.

Wages have been catching up, and real wages, which are adjusted for inflation, grew 1.5% in September from a year ago.

The Federal Reserve has targeted a soft landing where inflation comes down without mass layoffs. So far, that seems to be happening. Additionally, the Fed cut interest rates in September — the first cut in four years. There’s a high chance it will decide to do a smaller cut in November, depending on how the data looks and other factors.

Real disposable personal income per capita has been looking healthy

Real disposable personal income per capita — a widely used measure of the money people have to spend or save — spiked in the early pandemic because of stimulus checks in 2020 and 2021 and the expanded child tax credit for the 2021 tax year.

While real disposable personal income per capita cooled off as inflation accelerated in 2022, it has been gradually rising — and is above where it was before the pandemic and close to the prepandemic growth trend.

The S&P 500 in 2024 has hit several all-time highs

This year, the S&P 500 has been historically high multiple times. MarketWatch reported Saturday that it had hit 47 record highs this year. This index of large publicly traded US companies reflects corporate America doing quite well, and the rising figures may be good for people’s retirement-savings portfolios.

Reiman chalked it up to strong consumer spending, slowing inflation, and lower interest rates leading to higher corporate profits and valuations.

Confidence among home builders is still low compared with recent years

While the labor market is showing a lot of strength, the housing market is one area of the economy where there are some concerns. More single-family builders are feeling better about housing than a few months ago but are falling short of the confidence seen a couple of years ago. That’s based on the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which tracks the health of the single-family-housing market.

The index, based on what single-family builders surveyed reported, was a not-too-confident reading of 43 out of 100 in October.

Federal public debt as a share of GDP is elevated

Reiman said the Biden administration would be “handing off an economy with higher levels of debt than when taking office.” Federal debt is high compared with GDP, even beyond the spike of the debt as a share of GDP during the pandemic.

While federal debt as a share of GDP was slightly above 100% before the pandemic, recent figures are much higher than in the past. Federal debt was 120% of GDP in the second quarter of this year. In the long run, a high debt-to-GDP ratio may lead to expensive interest costs and tax hikes or spending cuts.

U.S. confirms North Korean troops are in Russia. What it means for the war in Ukraine.

Yahoo! News

U.S. confirms North Korean troops are in Russia. What it means for the war in Ukraine.

Dylan Stableford – October 23, 2024

U.S. officals said Wednesday that North Korea has deployed thousands of troops to Russia, confirming claims by Ukrainian and South Korean officials that Pyongyang is aiding Moscow with manpower amid Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine.

“We are seeing evidence that there are North Korean troops that have gone to Russia,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters traveling with him in Rome. “What, exactly, they’re doing is left to be seen. These are things that we need to sort out.”

At the White House, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that U.S. intelligence officials have determined that North Korea moved at least 3,000 soldiers by ship into eastern Russia earlier this month. The soldiers then traveled to multiple training sites in eastern Russia where they are currently undergoing training.

“We do not yet know whether these soldiers will enter into combat alongside the Russian military,” Kirby said. “But this is certainly a highly concerning probability.”

How did we get here?
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un appear to toast with wine glasses.
In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un toast during a reception in Pyongyang on June 19. (Vladimir Smirnov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)More

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang in June. The two sides emerged from the summit with a strategic agreement expanding their economic and military cooperation.

Late last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused North Korea of sending a military delegation to Russia and preparing to send 10,000 soldiers to help Moscow’s war effort.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said North Korea had shipped 1,500 special forces to Russia for training and eventual deployment in the war.

North Korean and Russian officials denied the reports of North Korean troops in Russia. U.S. officials were unable to confirm them until Wednesday.

What it means for the war
Dozens of North Korean soldiers in neat rows.
North Korean soldiers march during a parade in Pyongyang on Sept. 9, 2018. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

North Korea has one of the largest militaries in the world with over 1 million active personnel.

Russia has already used dozens of North Korea-made ballistic missiles against Ukraine, according to Reuters, and has received arms and munitions from Pyongyang.

But the use of North Korean troops on the ground in Russia’s fight against Ukraine would be an escalation in its war, now in its third year.

“That is a very, very serious issue,” Austin added. “And it will have impacts not only in Europe, it will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific as well.”

It’s also an indication that the bloody conflict has taken a toll on Russia’s military. U.S. military officials estimate that more than 600,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the war began, in 2022.

“You’ve heard me talk about the significant casualties that [Putin] has experienced over the last two and a half years,” Austin said. “This is an indication that he may be even in more trouble than most people realize.”

“Let’s be clear,” Kirby said. “If North Korean soldiers do enter into combat, this development would demonstrate Russia’s growing desperation in its war against Ukraine.”

He added: “If Russia is forced to turn to North Korea for manpower, this is a sign of weakness, not strength, on the part of the Kremlin.”

What’s next?

Austin said Wednesday that the U.S. would continue to monitor the troop buildup to assess why they are there — and whether North Korea can be considered a “co-belligerent” in the war.

The U.S. recently announced that it would provide more than $800 million in additional security assistance to Ukraine.

And Kirby said the U.S. is “on track” to provide Ukraine with hundreds of air-defense systems, artillery, armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles — “all of which will help keep Ukraine effective on the battlefield.”

At least 3,000 North Korean soldiers now inside Russia, US says

CNN

At least 3,000 North Korean soldiers now inside Russia, US says

Natasha Bertrand, Shania Shelton, Haley Britzky and Nikki Carvajal, October 23, 2024

At least 3,000 North Korean soldiers arrived in eastern Russia this month, the White House said Wednesday, and while it remains unclear what exactly they will do, it is a “highly concerning probability” that they will join the fight against Ukraine.

“We assess that between early- to mid-October, North Korea moved at least 3,000 soldiers into eastern Russia,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “We assess that these soldiers traveled by ship from the Wonsan area in North Korea to Vladivostok, Russia. … We do not yet know whether these soldiers will enter into combat alongside the Russian military, but this is certainly a highly concerning probability. After completing training, these soldiers could travel to western Russia and then engage in combat against the Ukrainian military.”

Earlier Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was the first senior US official to confirm on the record that North Korea had deployed troops to Russia as North Korea and Russia have forged increasingly friendly ties since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We are seeing evidence that that there are North Korean troops that have gone to Russia,” Austin told reporters traveling with him in Rome on Wednesday. “What, exactly, they’re doing is left to be seen.”

The US does not believe the North Korean troops have reached Ukraine, but the movements have generated deep concern as a potentially serious escalation in the conflict. Austin said the US is still trying to determine what role the North Koreans will play and whether they intend to travel to Ukraine.

“If they’re a co-belligerent, their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue, and it will have impacts not only on in Europe — It will also impact things in the Indo Pacific as well,” Austin said.

Kirby said Wednesday that the US has briefed the Ukrainian government and are keeping in close consultation with allies and partners.

A senior administration official said earlier Wednesday that the training of North Korean soldiers and possible preparation to send them to find to Ukraine is a sign of serious desperation on Russia’s part.

In Rome, Austin said Putin “may be even in more trouble than most people realize.” Kirby added that turning to North Korea for manpower “would be a sign of weakness, not strength, on the part of the Kremlin.” Kirby also said the move is a violation of UN Security Council Resolutions.

Asked what North Korea will get in return for helping Russia with manpower, Austin said the US is still trying to determine that as well.

In recent months, Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their anti-United States military partnership and the growing alliance has concerned officials in Kyiv and Washington.

“I can tell you one thing, though,” Kirby said Wednesday. “If they do deploy to fight against Ukraine, they’re fair game. They’re fair targets.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly warned that North Korean troops are joining the war on Russia’s behalf, telling a NATO summit last week that “10,000” soldiers and technical personnel were being prepared.

A source in Ukrainian intelligence previously told CNN that a small number of North Koreans have been working with the Russian military, mostly to help with engineering and to exchange information on the use of North Korean ammunition.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said Friday that North Korea has shipped 1,500 soldiers, including special forces fighters, to Russia for training.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak and MJ Lee contributed to this report.

Striking photographs document environmental decay on world’s largest lake

CNN

Striking photographs document environmental decay on world’s largest lake

Zoe Whitfield, CNN – October 18, 2024

Moving from Tehran to the more northerly lakeside city of Rasht aged 13, Khashayar Javanmardi’s youth was punctuated by weekends and extended holidays on the Iranian coastline of the Caspian Sea. “It was a dreamy place,” the photographer reminisced on a phonecall with CNN. “It was my utopia; everything happened for me at the Caspian.”

Diluting this picturesque vignette, Javanmardi recalled the nuisance of the accompanying gammarus: an amphipod crustacean similar to a freshwater shrimp that would nibble at his feet whenever he ventured into the water. He had always hated them, but as he grew aware of their absence, alarm bells started to ring. “That was the first thing I noticed change,” he said. “Later I read that, due to pollution, they were extinct. They had been food for bigger species…”

Climate change and a lack of rainfall has caused one of Iran's longest rivers, the Ghezel Ozen, to almost completely dry up, resulting in a devastating loss of aquatic wildlife. (Image taken in February 2022). - Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose Joints
Climate change and a lack of rainfall has caused one of Iran’s longest rivers, the Ghezel Ozen, to almost completely dry up, resulting in a devastating loss of aquatic wildlife. (Image taken in February 2022). – Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose JointsMore

Situated between Europe and Asia, the Caspian is the world’s largest inland body of water; a colossal-sized endorheic basin — or a major lake — that is also bounded by five countries, Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In recent years it has been the source of much concern for those privy to its shorelines, owing to what the UN Environment Programme has described as “an enormous burden of pollution from oil extraction and refining, offshore oil fields, radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants and huge volumes of untreated sewage and industrial waste introduced mainly by the Volga River (which flows through Russia and into the Caspian Sea).”

It was anxieties about the water’s biodiversity that kickstarted Javanmardi’s decade-long photography project, highlighting the environmental and social impact of the area’s man-made deterioration. A new monograph “Caspian: A Southern Reflection,” published by Loose Joints, is the result of this extensive survey and operates simultaneously as a warning and an invitation to learn. “This project is the essence of my life and career,” acknowledged Javanmardi, speaking from Lausanne in Switzerland, where he is based today. “As an artist, I’ve always wanted to be an honest witness.”

Locals call it the lake "Mother Caspian." One shepherd told Javanmardi of the lake's decline; "It’s like we were not good to our mother, we were not that kind to our mother and now she’s sad and she’s not going to share her love.’” Image taken January 2021. - Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose Joints
Locals call it the lake “Mother Caspian.” One shepherd told Javanmardi of the lake’s decline; “It’s like we were not good to our mother, we were not that kind to our mother and now she’s sad and she’s not going to share her love.’” Image taken January 2021. – Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose JointsMore

The book oscillates between landscapes, portraits and the quiet scenes that fit somewhere in the middle. On one page three family members stand facing out to rough white waves, the foot of a presumed fourth poking out of the window of a car to their left; elsewhere a mustached man sits alone at a plastic table, a look of despondence creeping across his face. Pictures of abandoned ships and other discarded objects further foreground the damage, coupled with a sense of loss.

Nominated at last year’s Prix Elysée (one of the world’s most prestigious photographic prizes run in conjunction with the Elysée Museum, also in Lausanne), an early iteration of the project received the special jury mention. Subsequently, the museum’s director Nathalie Herschdorfer penned the book’s introduction, describing how throughout its pages “we discover scenes that leave an aftertaste of desolation” and noting that “the inhabitants who pass through these landscapes, often photographed from a distance, express loneliness mixed with a sense of sorrow.”

The illegal dumping of waste close to the Caspian Sea is increasing pollution, as runoff seeps into the groundwater and directly contaminates the sea. - Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose Joints
The illegal dumping of waste close to the Caspian Sea is increasing pollution, as runoff seeps into the groundwater and directly contaminates the sea. – Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose Joints

“A question that I asked people was, ‘what is the role of the Caspian in your life?’,” said Javanmardi, who began working on the project at Iran’s Anzali Lagoon. “They were really open, sharing their memories and how they feel. They call it the Mother Caspian and one guy, a shepherd, said ‘it’s like we were not good to our mother, we were not that kind to our mother and now she’s sad and she’s not going to share her love.’”

Indeed, while the Caspian was once a major hub for movement between Iran and Europe, in the last century it became a venue for leisure. Today though, Iran’s Environment Department says its waters are contaminated with over 120,000 tons of pollutants annually — domestic and industrial as well as oil remnants — while Javanmardi estimates the fishing rate has slumped by 70%. “If it shrinks, people’s lives shrink,” he explained, citing further statistics that project water levels could drop by between nine and 18 meters by the end of the century. Military activity, namely Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is a further aggravating cause (the former is suspected of having used its Caspian Flotilla to launch a number of strikes).

Abandoned boats at Kiashahr Port, northern Iran, taken in July 2022. - Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose Joints
Abandoned boats at Kiashahr Port, northern Iran, taken in July 2022. – Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose Joints

Furthermore, the photographer characterized language as at the core of the negligence: though it’s widely talked about as the Caspian “Sea”, the Caspian is technically a lake, a categorization that would imply stricter regulations by the respective governing bodies around waste and pollution (than the sea). “They (politicians) don’t call it a lake, and one of the reasons is that if they change it, the whole conversation around regulation would change,” Javanmardi suggested.

His objectives for the project have always been to raise awareness, he continued. “That’s my goal, and so I tried to use the body of water as a way to communicate culture and politics, global politics — because this is not just about Iran,” he said. “I’ve tried to show how the Caspian is still alive. For me, it’s the last cry of life — you always feel something is in the air when you see the photos. I like to give this space to the audience, to feel this.”

May 2020: A farmer rests while water is pumping from the lagoon to his farm. Extracting water directly from the lagoon has no regulation. - Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose Joints
May 2020: A farmer rests while water is pumping from the lagoon to his farm. Extracting water directly from the lagoon has no regulation. – Khashayar Javanmardi 2024 courtesy Loose Joints

Despite the recklessness of higher political powers, during his travels Javanmardi found a sense of community in the people he met. “How they pay attention to the environment and are careful and in love with the Caspian, this is something that makes me hopeful,” he shared. “As long as I see this spirituality, that people know how privileged they are to live beside that sea… I know, as a person from there, we won’t let it be ruined.”

“Caspian: A Southern Reflection” by Khashayar Javanmardi is published by Loose Joints and out now

Maddow Blog | Trump blames Zelenskyy and U.S. for Putin’s war in Ukraine

MSNBC – Maddow Blog

Maddow Blog | Trump blames Zelenskyy and U.S. for Putin’s war in Ukraine

Steve Benen – October 18, 2024

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump meeting on Sept 27, 2024 in New York City.

There’s no evidence that the Kremlin has prepared talking points for Donald Trump to share with the American public. But if the former president were, hypothetically, receiving rhetorical scripts from Moscow, the Republican candidate probably sound an awful like he sounds now.

The New York Times reported, for example, on the GOP nominee’s latest comments regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Former President Donald J. Trump blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for Russia’s invasion of his country in a podcast interview released on Thursday, inverting the facts of the largest military action in Europe since the Second World War. … Mr. Trump, in a rambling, muddled answer on a conservative podcast, was criticizing President Biden’s leadership when he abruptly brought up his skepticism over the administration’s continued military aid to Ukraine.

“I think Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen,” Trump said, repeating a familiar refrain. “Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion. Who else got that kind of money in history? There’s never been. And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him, because I feel very badly for those people. But he should never have let that war start.”

A Washington Post analysis explained, “Even in the context of Trump’s long-standing obsequiousness to Putin, it’s hard to understand how Zelensky would have prevented having his nation be invaded. He could, in theory, have taken the approach that many Trump allies have since endorsed: simply agreeing to cede some or all of Ukraine to Russia, a move that would have prevented the damage incurred to the country’s buildings but amplified the damage done to its sovereignty.”

Later, in the same podcast interview, the Republican went from blaming Zelenskyy to saying he also blames his own country’s government, claiming that President Joe Biden helped “instigate” the conflict.

The only person Trump didn’t blame was Vladimir Putin — who, incidentally, is the one person responsible for the deadly and disastrous conflict.

The comments came just days after the former American president refused to say whether he’s had multiple, secret conversations with Putin since leaving the White House, though he added, “[B]ut I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing.”

Which came on the heels of allegations that the former Republican president, while in office, secretly sent Covid-19 testing equipment to Putin at the height of the pandemic, even as people in his own country struggled to gain access to such resources. (While Trump denied the allegations, the Kremlin — to the extent that its statements have merit — said Trump did, in fact, send Covid tests to Moscow.)

Which came on the heels of Trump refusing to say whether he wants our Ukrainian allies to prevail in the war against Russia.

Which came on the heels of Trump denouncing U.S. efforts to combat Russian misinformation campaigns, going so far as to characterize Russia as a victim.

Which came on the heels of the GOP candidate talking up the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Which came weeks after Trump publicly congratulated Russia over a historic prisoner swap.

Which came on the heels of the Republican pointing to Putin for validation to justify his position on Ukraine.

Which came on the heels of the former American president celebrating the fact that Putin was echoing his talking points about the 2024 election and Trump’s multiple criminal indictments.

Which came on the heels of Trump telling a Mar-a-Lago audience how “smart” Putin was for invading a neighboring country.

Which came on the heels of Trump describing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius” and part of a “wonderful” strategy.

Which came on the heels of years’ worth of Trump kowtowing, genuflecting, and repeatedly showing abject weakness toward his Russian ally.

There Is No Precedent for Something Like This in American History

By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist – October 18, 2024

An image of Donald Trump on a television in a darkened room.
Credit…Ioulex for The New York Times

Toward the end of his tenure, Gen. Mark Milley, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2019 to 2023, told Bob Woodward of The Washington Post that Donald Trump was a fundamental threat to the safety and integrity of the United States.

“No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump,” the general told Woodward. “Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.”

Let’s stop for a second.

It is simply extraordinary that the nation’s top general would tell anyone, much less one of the most famous reporters in the world, that the former president of the United States was a “fascist” — a “fascist to the core,” even — and a threat to the constitutional order. There is no precedent for such a thing in American history — no example of another time when a high-ranking leader of the nation’s armed forces felt compelled to warn the public of the danger posed by its once and perhaps future chief executive.

More important than the novelty of Milley’s statement is the reality that he’s right.

News of the general’s 2023 assessment broke last Friday. That afternoon, and as if to prove the point, Trump dived even deeper into the rhetorical abyss, telling his followers that he would deploy an 18th-century law to “liberate” the country from immigrants once and for all. “I make you this vow: November 5th, 2024 will be LIBERATION DAY in America,” Trump wrote on X.

“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered — and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them the hell OUT OF OUR COUNTRY.” And “to expedite removals of this savage gang,” he continued, “I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American Soil.”

To be clear, the Alien Enemies Act — one of the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts signed by President John Adams — does not distinguish between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants and foreign nationals, a distinction that did not exist at the time of passage. This means that any immigrant deemed an “enemy alien” by the Trump administration could be subject to arrest and removal by the federal government.

To make this a reality, Trump said, “we will send elite squads of ICE, border patrol, and federal law enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest, and deport every last illegal alien gang member, until there is not a single one left.” And as he explained later in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, this crusade wouldn’t stop with immigrants. “I always say, we have two enemies,” Trump said, adding, “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

There is both a temptation and a tendency to dismiss all of this as just tough talk, the empty promises of one of the most dishonest men to ever sit in the Oval Office. Even his supporters, as my newsroom colleague Shawn McCreesh discovered, are inclined to treat his words and statements as something other than actual speech — utterances that convey feeling, not meaning. (Why anyone would want this kind of person in the White House is a separate question.)

This, as I’ve argued again and again, is a mistake. Presidential rhetoric corresponds to presidential action; it precedes and defines it. What a candidate says on the campaign trail connects to what he (or she) will do in office. And if Trump has had a single consistent message, it is that he’ll use the violent arm of the state to cleanse the nation of “scum” and “vermin,” whether immigrants and refugees or dissenters and political opponents like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.

There is no reason to act as if the former president is issuing idle threats, especially given his efforts as president to wield violence against protesters, migrants and other perceived enemies of the state. “When he was president,” Asawin Suebsaeng and Tim Dickinson report in Rolling Stone, “several ideas that Trump repeatedly bellowed about in the Oval Office included conducting mass executions, and having U.S. police units kill scores of suspected drug dealers and criminals in urban areas in gunfights, with the cops then piling those corpses up on the street to send a grim message to gangs.”

The only reason these fantasies never became reality is that his aides and top officials either ignored or refused to carry out his orders. Next time, he’ll be surrounded by loyalists and sycophants. Next time, we won’t be so lucky.

What explains those Americans who hear Trump and, counter-intuitively, refuse to believe that he says what he means — that he’s just “telling it how it is”?

When exposed to the most intense and acute forms of stress, the brain doesn’t short-circuit as much as it resets to factory settings. You revert to your past experiences and usual patterns of behavior in order to make sense of and respond to the crisis at hand. Your brain takes the extraordinary and — to your detriment — makes it ordinary. This dynamic is the reason soldiers and pilots and first responders and anyone tasked to work in an emergency are trained to act without thinking: reprogrammed so that the mind defaults to a well-defined set of actions when subjected to extreme, mind-altering stress.

You can think of Donald Trump as that extraordinary stress. He is an authoritarian. His running mate, whose intellectual influences include people openly opposed to democracy, is arguably even worse. Trump’s campaign rests on an explicit promise to govern as an autocrat. He has announced, repeatedly, his intent to abuse the authority granted him as president to essentially terrorize millions of Americans, immigrants and native-born citizens alike.

If many Americans, from ordinary voters to political elites and the press, seem paralyzed with inaction, unable to accept what is plainly in front of us, it might just be because the stress of the situation has taken its toll on all of us. Faced with the truly unimaginable, many Americans have defaulted to the notion that this is an ordinary election with ordinary stakes.

If only that were the truth.

trump is on the board of directors of putin’s GRU: Trump says Zelensky ‘should never have let’ Ukraine war start

AFP

Trump says Zelensky ‘should never have let’ Ukraine war start

AFP – October 17, 2024

Donald Trump (right) humiliated Volodymyr Zelensky when the pair met in New York last month, after the Repulican boasted of his good relationship with Russia's Vladimir Putin (Alex Kent)
Donald Trump (right) humiliated Volodymyr Zelensky when the pair met in New York last month, after the Repulican boasted of his good relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin (Alex Kent)Alex Kent/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFPMore

White House candidate Donald Trump on Thursday blamed US ally Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, arguing that President Volodymyr Zelensky had failed in his duty to halt hostilities before they started.

The comments — made in an interview with a podcast supportive of him — sparked an immediate backlash as critics accused the 78-year-old Republican former president of being a “traitor” and an “idiot.”

“Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen. Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion. Who else got that kind of money in history? There’s never been (anyone),” Trump told the two-million-subscriber PBD Podcast.

“And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him, because I feel very badly for those people. He should never have let that war start.”

Trump — who is running against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris — immediately pivoted to criticizing President Joe Biden, accusing him of having “instigated” the Ukraine war.

The Trump campaign told AFP the Republican was “clearly talking about Biden” and not Zelensky when he made his remarks about culpability for the war.

Ukraine communicates little about losses for fear of demoralizing its citizens after more than two years of Russia’s invasion, but the Wall Street Journal reported last month that the war had killed or wounded a million soldiers on both sides.

The United States is one of Ukraine’s main backers, and has disbursed more than $64.1 billion in military assistance to Zelensky’s government since the start of the war.

Although Kyiv is a US ally and Moscow is considered an adversary, Trump touted his good relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin during a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky in September.

Trump was impeached for withholding vital weaponry from Ukraine after Russia’s smaller-scale 2014 invasion, as he pushed its government unsuccessfully into announcing investigations into Biden, who was then his election rival.

A federal investigation identified numerous links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, which was found to have interfered in the 2016 US election on the Republican’s behalf.

Criticism over Trump’s apparent closeness to Putin was turbocharged last week by allegations that, while president, he sent the Russian leader Covid tests despite a US shortage and that the Republican and Putin may have been in contact numerous times since 2021.

“What a despicable Traitor,” the Republicans Against Trump lobby group posted on X, alongside footage of Trump’s podcast remarks.

“He’s an idiot, and the whole world wonders why so many Americans don’t see it,” added national security analyst John Sipher, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

‘So evil’ and ‘dangerous’: Trump doubles down on calling Democrats ‘enemies from within’

NBC News

‘So evil’ and ‘dangerous’: Trump doubles down on calling Democrats ‘enemies from within’

Nnamdi Egwuonwu and Raquel Coronell Uribe – October 15, 2024

‘So evil’ and ‘dangerous’: Trump doubles down on calling Democrats ‘enemies from within’

CUMMING, Ga. — Former President Donald Trump doubled down Tuesday on his remarks over the weekend referring to Democrats as the “enemy from within.”

During a taped town hall of all-women voters in Cumming, Georgia, with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner, the host asked Trump about his “enemy from within” comment, which he made during the network’s “Sunday Morning Futures” this past weekend.

During that interview, Trump told host Maria Bartiromo that California Rep. Adam Schiff and other Democrats were “lunatics” and a bigger threat to the U.S. than foreign adversaries like Russia or China.

“I always say, we have two enemies,” Trump said, adding: “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

He also suggested that the military could be called in to handle any unrest on Election Day from “radical left lunatics.”

Trump doubled down on those comments during his Tuesday night town hall, also calling Democrats “evil” and “dangerous.”

“They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick,” Trump added. “We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil,” Trump said.

The town hall airs at 11 a.m. Wednesday.

Vice President Kamala Harris has used Trump’s comments against him this week, calling a second Trump term “dangerous” at a Pennsylvania rally and releasing an ad titled “Enemy Within.”

Harris called Trump “increasingly unstable and unhinged,” saying he plans to use the military against American citizens and is “out for unchecked power.”

“A second Trump term is a huge risk for America,” she told supporters in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Faulkner gave Trump a chance to clarify his comments Tuesday at the town hall taping, asking him how he responded to Harris’ claims that he was “unhinged” and “out for unchecked power.”

Trump defended his comments, calling them “a nice presentation.”

“I wasn’t unhinged,” Trump said.

He also doubled down on his claims about Schiff, who led the prosecution in his first Senate impeachment trial.

“I use a guy like Adam Schiff because they made up the Russia, Russia hoax,” Trump said. “It took two years to solve the problem. Absolutely nothing was done wrong, etc, etc. They’re dangerous for our country.”

Asked to comment on Trump’s Tuesday remarks, a Schiff spokesman pointed to a pair of posts on X that the congressman in response to Trump’s Sunday interview.

“Donald Trump is openly threatening to call in the military to suppress his political opponents,” one of the posts reads. “We must defeat him this November and never let him fulfill his dictatorial ambitions.”

Representatives for Harris’ campaign and Pelosi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.