Wed: Almost Nobody Consistently Beats the Market ... Except

Psst!  Don't Tell Anyone.  Ukraine is Making Progress.  Apparently It is a Big Secret.

What: Ukraine has advanced across the entire southern (left) bank of the Dnipro River, filling in the last gap over the past few days with new crossings southwest of the city of Kherson, around Potemkin Island (its real name).

Why: Russian defenses in southern Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts, have proven too strong for Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia has apparently thrown a great number of its reserves in its bloody bid for Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s Kherson defenses are light, as Russia assumed the kilometer-wide Dnipro would be enough to protect its flanks. As of now, the river certainly complicates Ukraine’s advances, but it’s proving a surmountable obstacle.

How: The details remain shrouded in mystery, as they should be. No need to tip off Russians on how to better counter them. But from all indications, it’s a mix of drone swarms hitting Russian targets, a massive artillery advantage firing relatively safely from Ukraine’s side of the river, and elite light infantry units crossing the river via boat and barge and moving quickly through thinly defended Russian ranks. Russian sources report that Ukraine has started moving armor across the river, but Ukraine needs to bridge the river to bring across and supply serious combat power. That requires pushing Russian forces another 10 kilometers or so from the river, to protect any river crossing from tube artillery. This is why Ukraine is clearing territory around Krynky, near Ukraine’s most likely crossing point:



Ukraine has continued to make gains around Krynky (bottom left yellow splotch inside the circle) in recent days, reportedly liberating the whole village and pushing into the forest to its south, approaching the important T2206 highway. Their current advances aren’t random. Ukraine wants breathing room for its pontoon bridge.

So, what now? It’s now a game of highways. Or, put another way: a war of logistics.

There aren’t many roads in this part of Ukraine:

There are two main highways out of Crimea to the north: the E97 and the T2202. They connect to the T2206 running roughly parallel to the Dnipro, which eventually turns into the M14 running straight to Melitopol—the biggest strategic prize on the entire active war map.

As such, Ukraine will look to control those key intersections connecting Crimea to the T2206:

In addition to threatening Melitopol, which Ukraine needs to liberate in order to sever Vladimir Putin’s precious land bridge, this would also liberate Enerhodar, where Russia continues playing dangerous games at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. And with winter coming and the Kakhovka reservoir gone, the remaining marshy ground will be frozen, perhaps hard enough for additional Ukrainian crossings in that direction. Don’t sleep on the changed topography of this approach.

Ukraine Update: Ukraine gains in Kherson open up new strategic options

Who Thought It Was a Good Idea to Create Fire Hazzards Under Freeways?

The area under an elevated Los Angeles freeway that burned last weekend was a kind of open-air warehouse with businesses storing everything from wood pallets to cardboard boxes to hand sanitizer on lots leased by the state through a little-known program that now is under scrutiny.

The blaze Saturday burned about 100 support columns, forcing the closure of a vital mile-long stretch of Interstate 10 near downtown that is used by hundreds of thousands of people daily. It could take crews working around the clock between three and five weeks to repair the freeway, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

Newsom said the state would reassess the practice of leasing land under roads to bring in money for mass transportation projects.

Details of that program remain opaque. Newsom's office directed questions about whether the state has any regular inspection protocols to state transportation officials. The California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, did not respond to questions about inspections or provide information about how many properties the state leases.

"Wood pallets to cardboard boxes to hand sanitizer" Sounds Like the Perfect Fire Starter.

Which is More Important?  Freedom or Safety?

With less than two months until the end of the year, the Biden administration is running out of time to win the reauthorization of a spy program it says is vital to preventing terrorism, catching spies and disrupting cyberattacks.

The tool, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will expire at the end of December unless the White House and Congress can cut a deal and resolve an unusually vexing debate that has yielded unlikely alliances at the intersection of privacy and national security.

Without the program, administration officials warn, the government won't be able to collect crucial intelligence overseas. But civil liberties advocates from across the political spectrum say the law as it stands now infringes on the privacy of ordinary Americans, and insist that changes are needed before the program is reauthorized.

“Just imagine if some foreign terrorist organization overseas shifts its intentions and directs an operative here who'd been contingency planning to carry out an attack in our own backyard — and imagine if we're not able to disrupt the threat because the FBI's 702 authorities have been so watered down,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Wednesday on the House Homeland Security Committee.

The law, enacted in 2008, permits the U.S. intelligence community to collect without a warrant the communications of foreigners overseas suspected of posing a national security threat. Importantly, the government also captures the communications of American citizens and others in the U.S. when they’re in contact with those targeted foreigners.

In making the case for the law's renewal, the Biden administration over the last year has cited numerous instances in which intelligence derived from Section 702 has helped thwart an attack, including an assassination plot on U.S. soil, or contributed to a successful operation, such as the strike last year that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

National security officials have also said 59% of articles in the president’s daily brief contain Section 702 information, and point to the need for the program at a time when Israel's war with Hamas has led to elevated concerns about attacks inside the U.S.

But while both sides of the debate are in broad agreement that the program is valuable, they differ in key ways on how it should be structured, creating a stalemate as the deadline approaches and as Congress is consumed by a busy year-end agenda, including working to prevent a government shutdown and disputes over border security and war spending. The White House has already dismissed as unworkable the one known legislative proposal that’s been advanced.

Another complicating factor for the administration to navigate: the coalition of lawmakers skeptical of government surveillance includes both privacy-minded liberal Democrats and Republicans deeply supportive of former President Donald Trump who still regard the intelligence community with suspicion over the investigation of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

A key US spy tool will lapse at year's end unless Congress and the White House can cut a deal