Just before the 20th anniversary of the impact of Hurricane Katrina, a group of current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency employees have signed an extraordinary letter warning America that we could be headed for a similar disaster. Not the hurricane itself, but the man-made disaster which followed, as George W. Bush's FEMA proved to be completely incompetent at disaster recovery in a big way. They even called their letter the "Katrina Declaration," to amplify their warning.

Read Complete Article »

Two weeks later, nothing has changed. This shouldn't come as too big a surprise to anyone, really. Donald Trump uses the phrase "in two weeks' time" in exactly the same way that Little Orphan Annie sings about "tomorrow" -- because it never comes. It's perpetually out there in the future, just out of reach.

Read Complete Article »

Donald Trump thinks he has a plan. First, get rid of enough members of the Federal Reserve Board and replace them with his own minions, and then they'll do his bidding and drastically lower interest rates. Once he's appointed a majority of them, they'll do precisely what he wants without question. In the meantime, his appointee to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics will be firing high-level bean-counters and replacing them with apparatchiks, so that they can then make the official inflation number anything Trump wants it to be. This way, even if real inflation goes through the roof (as a result of lowering interest rates too fast), nobody will know about it because inflation will "officially" be at some ridiculously-unbelievable low figure. The economy "booms" (as measured by Trump's numbers), interest rates go down, and everyone's happy!

Read Complete Article »

After Donald Trump held two back-to-back summits, in an effort to get a quick ceasefire and peace agreement in Ukraine, not much of anything has actually changed. Unless you count the rest of the world either laughing at America's president or gingerly trying to not bruise his all-too-fragile ego. Both of those things have increased, sadly.

Read Complete Article »

The prospects of a ceasefire happening soon in Ukraine were always pretty slim. Now they seem to be receding into oblivion. Without some strong and decisive action by Donald Trump, the situation in Ukraine does not look likely to change in any meaningful way any time soon. The war will continue, people will keep dying, and Vladimir Putin will feel no compunction to bring an end to any of it. That seems to be the emerging reality.

Read Complete Article »

After two big meetings between Donald Trump and the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and various Europeans, it's hard to figure exactly where things stand. Was anything accomplished at all? If so, what?

While Trump has been cheerfully optimistic in his statements, the Europeans seem a lot more cautious and guarded in their outlook. Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, though, don't exactly seem filled with any of this happy spirit. In fact, Russia keeps contradicting what Trump and the rest of them are claiming has been accomplished.

Read Complete Article »

Today, however, all eyes are looking north to Alaska.

As I write this, the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has just begun. The two leaders met on the tarmac in a staged display of pomp, complete with red carpets and a shared limo ride to the building where the meetings will take place. Trump even applauded as Putin approached him, which is notable mostly for the difference in how Trump is treating Putin today and how he treated Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he visited the White House earlier this year (which was disgraceful, to say the least).

Read Complete Article »

If they want to win the midterms next year, Democrats should really return in a big way to that old chestnut from the Bill Clinton era: "It's the economy, stupid." Because that is where both Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are the weakest, and the economy is almost always either at or very near the top of the list of issues voters care the most about.

Read Complete Article »

While campaigning, Donald Trump promised the world he would end the war in Ukraine on his first day in office. Sometimes he even one-upped himself, suggesting he could probably end the war before he was even sworn in.

That, of course, didn't happen. Here we are more than 200 days in to Trump's second term, and the war rages on.

Donald Trump likes to see himself as a strongman -- a real "tough guy." But what we've seen is that he is at heart no more than a bully who immediately backs down when confronted with a truly strong opponent. Vladimir Putin is fully aware of this fact. Which all sets the stage for their summit meeting this Friday in Alaska.

Read Complete Article »

[Donald Trump today, while speaking on an unrelated subject:]

You know, I'm going to see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday.

[Friday, dateline Alaska. Donald Trump emerges from his meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin and takes the podium:]

I am pleased to announce that President Putin and I have made a deal. Part of it covers Ukraine, which I will get to in a little bit. But here's the big news -- I have agreed to sell back to Russia all of the state of Alaska above the Arctic Circle. Not a lot of people know this, but Russia actually owned all of Alaska a while ago. That's right! The land we're standing on right now was actually part of Russia -- who knew?

Read Complete Article »