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Authored by John Stossel, op-ed via Townhall.com,

Congressional hearings were created to educate lawmakers so they have knowledge before they pass bills or impeach a president.

Not today. Today, hardly any education happens.

During the President Trump impeachment “testimony,” legislators tried to score points. At least five times, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., shut down criticism by shouting, “Gentleman is not recognized!”

I get that politicians are eager for “face time” in front of a larger audience, but I assumed they would at least try to learn things. Nope.

Maybe they don’t want to ask real questions because they fear looking as dumb as then-Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, did at a hearing on Facebook. He asked Mark Zuckerberg, “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”

“We run ads,” smirked Zuckerberg. “I see,” said Hatch.

What’s obvious to most people somehow eludes the oblivious “experts” in Congress.

At another Facebook hearing, Congress grilled Zuckerberg about his plan to launch an electronic currency called Libra. Zuckerberg said, “I actually don’t know if Libra is going to work, but I believe it’s important to try new things.”

He was right. But instead of asking about technological or economic implications of the idea, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, asked Zuckerberg, of the companies partnering with him, “how many are headed by women?”

“Congressman, I do not know the answer,” replied Zuckerberg.

“How many of them are minorities?” asked Green. “Are there any members of the LGBTQ+ community?”

Green doesn’t want to learn anything. He wants to sneer and score points.

Politicians’ sloppy ignorance is extraordinary.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, grilled Google CEO Sundar Pichai about iPhones, citing a story about his granddaughter using one, leading Pichai to explain, “Congressman, iPhone is made by a different company.”

Today’s posturing is not what the founders had in mind when they invented hearings in 1789.

George Mason said members of Congress “possess inquisitorial powers” to “inspect the Conduct of public offices.”

Yes! Investigate government.

But today, they are more likely to threaten CEOs and bully opponents.

“Are you stupid?” then-Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said to one witness. They want to showboat, not learn. Often, they ask questions even when they know the answers.

“Ms. DeVos, have you ever taken out a student loan?” asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. “Have any of your children had to borrow money?”

Warren knows that DeVos is a billionaire, but she wanted to score points with her fans.

One of the louder showboaters today is self-proclaimed socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. She asked Wells Fargo boss Tim Sloan, “Why was the bank involved in the caging of children?”

“We weren’t,” replied Sloan.

Some of today’s hearings are useful in that we get to see how absurd and ignorant our representatives can be.

During a hearing on military personnel being stationed on the island of Guam, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, said, “My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it would tip over and capsize.” Really. He said that.

Then there was the time Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chair of the House Financial Services Committee, summoned bank CEOs to Washington and demanded, “What are you guys doing to help us with this student loan debt?!”

“We stopped making student loans in 2007,” Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan told her.

“We actually ended student lending in 2009,” added Citigroup’s Michael Corbat.

“When the government took over student lending in 2010 … we stopped doing all student lending,” explained Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase.

The Chair of the Financial Services Committee didn’t even know that her own party kicked bankers out of the student loan business, insisting that government take over?! Apparently not. She is so eager to blame business for government’s mistakes that she didn’t research her own topic.

The more I watch politicians, the more I hate them.

Let’s give them less power.

Once again, it’s all about the options market tail wagging the entire market’s dog, and as Nomura’s MD of cross-asset strategy details below, we remain a long way from investors rediscovering “gravity”…

Consolidated S&P options are seeing both $Delta- and $Gamma- testing recent extremes (partially as a function of the market’s move higher), with $Gamma at 92nd %ile (rel 2014) and $Delta at 99th %ile now…

…and seeing “gravity” building at the massive 3300 strike in SPX (a whopping $10.5B-worth of $Gamma)…

…helping keep us so “sticky” between there and the next-largest $Gamma strike at 3250 ($6.7B)

This VERY “Long Gamma” dynamic continues to act as a market shock-absorber (alongside recently accelerated “Buyback” flows ahead of the imminent rolling “blackouts” into EPS).

The bottom line is that it will require an enormous “macro shock” catalyst to push us down to levels where we would see the Dealer position “flip” (down at 3198)…

Additionally McElligott notes that we sit even further away from our estimated levels where Systematic Trend CTA would likely see deleveraging “triggered” (SPX level under 3142).

If missile strikes on US military bases don’t trigger the ‘gravity’, we wonder what will? China trade deal fail? Unexpected impeachment vote? AAPL miss and downgrade… again?

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Since 1969, “Virginia Is for Lovers” has been the tourism and travel slogan of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Advertising Age called it “one of the most iconic ad campaigns in the past 50 years.”

But the Virginia of 2020 seems to be another country than the friendly commonwealth to which this writer moved four decades ago.

Charlottesville, home to Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia, has become famous as the site of a 2017 Klan-Nazi clash with antifa over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a municipal park. During the clash, protester Heather Heyer was run over and killed.

There followed the inauguration of a new Democratic Governor, Ralph Northam, in 2018 and a new attorney general. Both, it was learned, had masqueraded in blackface in their college days. And two women accused their colleague, new Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, with rape.

Resignations were demanded. But all three hunkered down, and the crisis abated. Now a new cultural issue has emerged.

First-term Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton, from the D.C. suburbs, has denounced Virginia’s representation in the U.S. Capitol by statues of George Washington in the Rotunda and Robert E. Lee in the crypt a floor below. Both statues have represented Virginia for more than a century.

Wexton wants Lee replaced by an African American hero from a list that she and Rep. A. Donald McEachin reportedly submitted.

Two names on their list are unfamiliar figures from the desegregation days of the 1950s. The third is better known: Nat Turner.

In “The Americans: A Social History of the United States,” published in 1969, author J. C. Furnas describes the deeds of the man Wexton and McEachin would be pleased to see replace Robert E. Lee:

“In August 1831, Nat Turner, paranoid slave preacher and cunjur man, led his superstition-fuddled followers to kill fifty-five whites of all sexes and ages in an aimless terrorizing of Southhampton County in the southeastern corner of Virginia.

“The poor twisted creature could hardly have found a worse time to sharpen Southern fears of a slave rising.” Turner was tried and hanged and, that winter, writes Furnas, “The Virginia legislature voted down by a narrow margin a bill for gradual extinction of slavery.”

Nat Turner’s terrorism had set back emancipation.

Let me go out on a limb: If the Virginia General Assembly votes to replace Robert E. Lee in the U.S. Capitol with a statue of Nat Turner, it will not be the unifying event Wexton imagines.

But the Assembly will be dealing soon with measures even more volatile.

On Jan. 20, “Lobby Day” at the Assembly, thousands of gun advocates, many openly armed, will be coming to Richmond to protest new gun laws Northam and his new Democratic majority campaigned on and are determined to deliver.

Already, 110 towns, cities and counties in Virginia have created “Second Amendment sanctuaries” where new state laws that restrict gun rights will not be enforced by local authorities.

As the Washington Post writes,

“Virginia is a former Confederate State with strong rural traditions and lax gun laws. Guns represent the strongest, reddest line against the demographic changes that have seen Old Dominion voters usher in a new era of Democratic leadership in recent elections.

“A Nevada-based group called the Oath Keepers said it is sending training teams to help form posses and militia in Virginia. The leader of a Georgia militia called Three Percent Security Force has posted videos and calls to arms on Facebook, urging ‘patriots’ to converge on Richmond.”

Still, the divisions among Virginians are not only over history, heroes and guns, they are also moral and religious.

A year ago, Northam said he supported abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and beyond, if an abortion were unsuccessful.

Here is Northam, in his own words, on the rights of the unborn:

“(Third trimester abortions are) done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s nonviable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. … The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Unlike the seven states of the Deep South, Virginia did not vote to secede and leave the Union until President Lincoln issued his call to arms to put down the rebellion after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter.

Then the state of Virginia seceded from the Union as the colony of Virginia had seceded from Great Britain at Philadelphia 84 years before.

Today, it appears a new secession is underway. Virginians are separating from each other over issues as deep and divisive — such as who can take innocent life and when — as those that divided us in 1861.

As are the rest of their countrymen in this time of Trump.

With all eyes on Iran and Iraq, and with the potential for a near-future US troop withdrawal from Iraq looming, the media has largely moved on from the other great festering problem which at any time could again become ground zero for full blown international proxy war: Idlib province. 

Following a month-long major Russian-Syrian offensive against jihadists in Idlib, which has witnessed hundreds of aerial bombings and the exit of tens of thousands of civilians toward Turkey (and according to both UN figures and Erdogan this is over 250,000), Moscow and Ankara have announced a new ceasefire agreement for the contested northwest Syrian province. 

“According to the agreements with the Turkish side, the ceasefire regime was introduced in the Idlib de-escalation zone starting from 14:00 Moscow time (11:00 GMT) on January 9, 2020,” Russian Major-General Yury Borenkov announced Thursday. This has reportedly resulted in a “paused” Syrian Army offensive, which is to allow in humanitarian aid. 

However, the key to any potentially lasting or significant pause in fighting relates to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) acceptance. The al-Qaeda group issued no initial comment on the Russian announcement.

The new ceasefire is part of a broader attempt by Turkey, Russia, and Iran to “de-escalate” the war in Idlib, also following pressure and threats out of Washington over the Syrian national offensive to liberate the territory from terrorists. Past attempts at any lasting ceasefire have witnessed sporadic mortar and missile attacks launched by al-Qaeda forces in areas south of Idlib, resulting in renewed Syrian Army operations to root out the insurgency. 

Additionally, Moscow is engaged in broader efforts to ‘normalize’ Assad’s standing at the UN and among the so-called international community. As for Turkey, President Erdogan has lately voiced the impossibility of his country potentially absorbing millions more refugees from the Idlib war fallout while also repeating his well-known ‘blackmail’ threats to ‘open the gates’ of Syrian refugees on Europe. 

As Al Jazeera reports, “Turkey has been pushing and calling for the ceasefire, in part because it is already under enormous strain from the influx of Syrian refugees already within its border.”

Prior attempts and Russia-Turkey brokered pauses or ceasefires in and around Idlib have been very short-lived, also given Syria’s Assad has vowed to restore every inch of natural Syria to Damascus authority. 

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The retail apocalypse was particularly bad in 2019, and only days into 2020, Macy’s has announced it’ll begin closing stores, following a trend in the industry.  Macy’s will close a minimum of 28 stores, and one Bloomingdale’s as problems in retail continue.

With consumer spending so high, it’s hard to imagine a reason for store closures. 

“We regularly review our store portfolio and will provide an update at our Investor Day on February 5th,” the company said in a statement sent to USA TODAY.

Clearance sales will begin this month and run for eight to 12 weeks, Macy’s Media Relations Manager Julianne Bartosz said in an email to TCPalm.com, which is part of the USA TODAY Network, about the Macy’s in the Indian River Mall in Vero Beach, Florida.  Most other locations to be shuttered have not yet been disclosed.  Officials also steered clear of an exact number of closings, say there would be a “minimum of 28 stores” permanently closed.

Among the government and Federal Reserve’s insistence that consumers are spending money, Macy’s reported a drop in holiday sales. Macy’s November and December sales results Wednesday, which showed holiday sales did not meet the expectations. “Macy’s, Inc.’s performance during the holiday season reflected a strong trend improvement from the third quarter,” CEO Jeff Gennette said in a news release. “Additionally, customers responded to our gifting assortment and marketing strategy, particularly in the 10 days before Christmas.”

In a statement sent to USA TODAY, Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData Retail, said most of Macy’s legacy stores “looked shabby and lacked festive cheer. In our view, they remain unfit for purpose and there is a big question mark over their long-term future.”

Saunders called the decision to shutter underperforming locations “a foretaste of things to come if Macy’s does not invest in and reinvigorate these outlets.”

A major and dangerous close call between US and Russia has unfolded in the north Arabian sea near the Persian Gulf. A Russian warship “aggressively approached” a US Navy destroyer, nearly hitting it, a US Navy statement said Friday.

The US Navy further released video of the incident, which reportedly involved repeat warnings issued from the US vessel over a risk of collision. This included five warning blast signals issued from the deck of the US destroyer, the USS Farragut.

CLOSE CALL: Navy releases video of a Russian ship approaching the USS Farragut in the North Arabian Sea yesterday. pic.twitter.com/jRxu2p0LjV

— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) January 10, 2020

“On Thursday, Jan. 9, while conducting routine operations in the North Arabian Sea, USS Farragut was aggressively approached by a Russian Navy ship,” the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which operates in the Persian Gulf and Middle East said in a statement.

“Farragut sounded five short blasts, the international maritime signal for danger of a collision, and requested the Russian ship alter course in accordance with international rules of the road.”

The US Navy underscored that the Russian vessel made an “aggressive approach” which very nearly resulted in collision in the open seas. Indeed video confirms the two ships came very close to one another.

On Thursday, Jan. 9, while conducting routine operations in the North Arabian Sea, USS Farragut (DDG 99) was aggressively approached by a Russian Navy ship. pic.twitter.com/SCVyTINNqe

— U.S. 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) January 10, 2020

“The Russian ship initially refused but ultimately altered course,” the statement added, and noted further: “While the Russian ship took action, the initial delay in complying with international rules while it was making an aggressive approach increased the risk of collision.”

According to a CNN report of the incident, the Russian vessel came as close as 180 feet from the US ship, close enough for each side to directly and physically communicate from the decks. 

In one video a US Navy crew member can be seen running in the direction of the Russian destroyer in order to establish voice contact and wave the vessel off. 

Importanly, the USS Farragut is part of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier group deployed to the region last year to ensure open and safe passageway for vessels traversing the vital Strait of Hormuz amid soaring tensions with Iran.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been clinging to her bill of impeachment for one reason: hoping that a judge will rule to release all the evidence and depositions collected by Robert Mueller’s investigation. What’s wrong with that? Mr. Mueller failed to find any prosecutable crimes. That was the sum and substance of his two-year-long exercise in bad faith. In which case, all that material is officially and legally evidence of nothing. Impeachment is a political act and sealed evidence of nothing can’t be released to one set of political actors in a political quarrel for use as a political weapon. More to the point – and to Mrs. Pelosi’s real motive here – the material is not for impeachment but rather to use the Mueller dossier as political opposition “research” for the coming election.

There is no question that from the start of his investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller knew that the case was opened under false pretenses, since his very close friend, the erstwhile FBI director James Comey, also knew by early 2017 that all the predicating material was substantially false, and that it was procured by Mrs. Clinton. To carry it beyond that was a scheme by acting FBI director Rod Rosenstein to issue a series of “scoping” letters that increasingly widened Mr. Mueller’s purview to go fishing for crimes in every area and every chronological phase of the president’s life. That smacks of what’s known in Anglo-American law as attainder by process: first declaring someone an outlaw, and only afterward seeking a crime to justify it. Under our system, first crimes are established, then persons liable for them are brought to court to answer charges.

Of course, there’s good reason to suspect that Mr. Mueller himself was a false front for the operation conducted in his name, which was really an intrigue carried out by a claque of Democratic Party Lawfare attorneys led by Andrew Weissmann, Mr. Mueller’s chief deputy. Mr. Mueller’s testimony before two House committees last July revealed a pathetic figure who was unacquainted with the most basic pieces of his own inquiry.

The case for House members to get access to all that backstage Mueller material could go up to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, Impeachment’s second act is about to get underway whether Mrs. Pelosi likes the terms or not. It’s the Senate’s prerogative to decide. These terms appear to be exactly the same as the ones used by the Senate for Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial — which means that each side chooses a team of “managers” to present its case, and then the managers are subject to grilling by senators. The House Democrats are insisting on calling witnesses solely to maintain their court claim for testimony from the White House counsel, with which the aforesaid Mueller material is associated in the case. If the rules eschew witnesses, that case is moot, and the Democrats lose access to a trove of political oppo research obtained for them under false pretenses by their own operatives in the Department of Justice.

Secondarily, the impeachment was designed to get senators in swing states on the record voting to acquit the president in the hopes that it will somehow taint their re-election prospects and possibly flip control of the Senate to the Democrats. That outcome would above all insure that Mr. Trump could not get another Supreme Court nominee confirmed in his second term, nor continue the wholesale appointment of lesser federal district judges. Plus, of course, it would obstruct any other legislative initiative his party brought for four years.

Personally, I would miss the chance to hear from the so-called “whistleblower” who instigated the impeachment phase of the long-running coup against Mr. Trump. Contrary to the disinformation put out by The New York Times and other coup co-conspirators, the “whistleblower” enjoys no right to anonymity. It would also be satisfying to hear how his enabler, Intel Community IG Michael Atkinson, might account for the process that steered the “whistleblower” to Rep. Adam Schiff and his staff — for instance, back-dating the official documents that green-lighted the “whistleblower’s” case. Mr. Atkinson is deeply implicated himself as a player in the earlier 2017 RussiaGate FISA court mischief, since his previous job was agency counsel to DOJ National Security chief John Carlin, who signed off on fraudulent FISA warrants. Mr. Atkinson must have counseled Mr. Carlin to do that. Testimony from Mr. Schiff about the “whistleblower” process would also be edifying. Senators would surely get to see Mr. Atkinson’s so-far-withheld deposition transcript from the House Intel Committee hearings of November. It might establish grounds for Mr. Schiff’s expulsion from the House of Representatives as a serial liar, a salutary measure to restore a sense of legitimacy in American affairs.

If witnesses were allowed in the Senate trial phase of impeachment, the president’s team could haul in scores of former and current government officials implicated in the seditious activities against him to testify. The nation would be well-served and enlightened. The only question is whether their testimony might queer the actual criminal cases pending against them outside the impeachment circus.

Scapegoating by the establishment (for a Dem loss) or pre-emptive actions by Trump (for a Trump victory which will be inevitably besmirched by another round of sore-losing snowflakes)?

It’s hard to know for sure but one thing is certain, it will prolong the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ headlines for one more news cycle.

Bloomberg reports that, according to two officials familiar with the matter, US intelligence and law enforcement have begun a probe to assess whether Russia is trying to “meddle’ in Joe Biden’s nomination (and perhaps election, as he remains the front-runner) campaign.

Part of the inquiry is reportedly to determine whether Russia is trying to weaken Biden by promoting controversy over his past involvement in U.S. policy toward Ukraine while his son worked for an energy company there.

As one anonymous official proclaimed – despite zero evidence of this actually happening other than an extremely small ad spend on Facebook? – a Kremlin strategy to undermine Biden would echo its work in 2016, when American intelligence agencies found that Russia carried out a sophisticated operation to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton and ultimately help Trump.

“In America, they’re using social media and many other tools to inflame social divisions, promote conspiracy theories and sow distrust in our democracy and elections,” William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in a statement.

“As we look ahead to 2020, one thing I can guarantee is they’ll keep up their influence campaigns and utilize new vectors of disinformation.”

But, as Bloomberg is quick to remind readers, Russia’s campaign interference in 2016 resulted in a multiagency investigation that led to a highly classified intelligence assessment, part of which was made public in January 2017.

Trump has questioned the finding of Russian meddling and has asserted that government agents biased against him conducted a “witch hunt” into whether his campaign conspired with Russia.

“Vladimir Putin has interfered in our elections before and it’s no surprise he’s doing so again to prop up President Trump,” said Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates.

“Biden is to 2020 what Clinton was to 2016,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who has been tracking Russia’s foreign influence operations.

“When you watch just how they speak publicly, they’re very clear that, yes, a second term of Trump would be great.”

“Going all the way back to May they were talking about Biden-Ukraine very heavily,” he said.

“It’s a great narrative for them.”

The potential for Russia to spread falsehoods – and to develop increasingly sophisticated techniques to do so – is one of the bigger concerns that U.S. officials have as the 2020 election approaches, said John Demers, head of the Justice Department’s national security division.

One thing is notable – no one is claiming China is meddling? Yet!