Month: September 2018

Russia Releases Footage Of New Anti-Ship Missiles Pounding Warships

Russia has conducted a dramatic and what appears to be successful test of new anti-ship missiles by blowing up a fleet of warships in a training exercise.

Footage released by Russia’s defense ministry demonstrated the capabilities of the Kh-35U anti-ship missiles, which the military vaunts as a ship killer immune from enemy defense mechanisms. 

Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced this week: “Su-34 multifunctional fighter-bombers carried out practical launches of the newest guided anti-ship missiles Kh-35U.”

“All in all eight launches were carried out, all missiles successfully hit targets,” the statement added. 

According to the popular military analysis site Defence Blog, the Kh-35U missiles have a range of about 155 miles, and are capable of destroying surface targets and surface ships displacing 5,000 tons. Russian officials also claim that the ship killers can evade any countermeasures.

And on Wednesday the MoD released more weapons testing footage, showing its “Bastion coastal missile system” in action during an Arctic exercise for the first time. 

The missile was tested on Kotelny island above the Arctic circle, and was launched at a range of over 60km “to prove its readiness to effectively fulfill combat duty in the Arctic and protect the island area and the sea coast of Russia,” according to a Russian MoD statement. 

The training and weapons testing footage is being released amidst soaring tensions with both NATO and the US, as well as Israel.

Last week a Russian reconnaissance plane was shot down with 15 crew members on board over the Mediterranean in a case of friendly Syrian fire amidst the confusion that ensued during a massive Israeli attack. 

And lately multiple dangerous US intercepts of long-range Russian bombers have occurred near the Arctic Circle off the Alaskan coast. NORAD has scrambled jets to warn off the Russian bombers twice in the last month. 

Russia appears especially keen on showing off its anti-ship defenses as it is currently maintaining its largest ever naval build-up in the Mediterranean after weeks of US threats against Syria. 

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“Habitual Liar” Trump And “3rd Rate Lawyer, Low Life” Avenatti Engage In Furious Twitter Spat

Following Wednesday’s accusation against Brett Kavanaugh by Julie Sweatnick, who Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Judge, systematically drugged and “gang raped” women at parties, Sweatnick’s attorney Michael Avenatti and President Trump engaged in a fierce Twitter battle. 

Following Sweatnick’s allegation that she knew about, and was ultimately victim to the rape gang (without ever reporting the alleged mass-rapings to authorities), President Trump tweeted: “Avenatti is a third rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations, like he did on me and like he is now doing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He is just looking for attention and doesn’t want people to look at his past record and relationships – a total low-life!“

To which Avenatti replied: ““False accusations?” Like those crimes your fixer Cohen pled to? You are an habitual liar and complete narcissist who also is a disgrace as a president and an embarrassment to our nation. You are so inept that your “best and brightest” are Cohen and Giuliani. Let’s go.”

Sweatnick’s allegation is the latest in a series of unsupported allegations by women who have accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in the early 1980s. 

Christine Blasey Ford accused the Supreme Court nominee of groping her at a party in the early 1980s which she can’t remember the location, date or other specifics – while a second woman, Deborah Ramirez said that Kavanaugh waved his penis at her while at a Yale party. Ramirez’s account is similarly hazy to Ford’s. 

Both Kavanaugh and Ford are scheduled to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning, while a vote has been scheduled to confirm Kavanaugh Friday morning at 9:30 a.m. EST. 

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Bernie Sanders Might Learn Something From Venezuela’s Minimum Wage Experiment

Authored by Doug French via The Mises Institute,

There are labor shortages all over the country. There are not enough truck drivers, plumbers, food waitresses, construction workers, and so on. The official unemployment rate is below 4 percent. It was just reported private sector wages popped 2.9 percent.

However, Bernie Sanders and other “progressive” candidates are endorsing the idea of a federal living wage. On his website, Bernie starts with,

Millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages. We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty. The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage. We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years.

His latest big idea is to

tax companies with 500 or more employees an amount equal to federal benefits received by their low-wage workers. The bill is designed to discourage large companies from paying their workers so little that they end up relying on federal benefits, such as food stamps, to make ends meet.

If Bernie were paying attention, there is a minimum wage experiment going on in real time in Venezuela right now. Sure, there’s some serious money printing going on there and plenty of socialist schemes to keep the shelves empty. However, the fact there’s nothing to buy hasn’t kept Venezuelan president Maduro from hiking that country’s minimum wage 24 times since 2013 when he took office.

The latest hike went into effect on September 17, and it was huuuge — 3,000 percent. Fabiola Zerpa writes forBloomberg,

7 million employees are guaranteed 1,800 bolivars a month — worth about $20 at the black-market rate. President Nicolas Maduro intended the mandate as political boost, but it’s having the opposite effect as companies, already hit by Venezuela’s epic economic contraction, tell workers they can’t afford to keep them.

No one should be stunned if employees are told to go home if the government by way of brute force increases pay by 30 times.

“I already told my four employees to go find other jobs,” Caracas garage owner Marcos Vizcaino told Bloomberg. “I’ve decided to close. There’s no need for me to keep to losing money for a third year in a row.”

Zerpa writes,

The higher minimum wage, which Maduro announced last month, was among several bids to steady the rapidly failing state’s economy and stanch hyperinflation. The socialist autocrat also devalued the currency and lopped five zeroes off denominations of the bolivar bill, which has been rendered almost valueless.

Lopping zeros off a currency has never worked and how on earth would raising the minimum wage by 30 times “stanch hyperinflation?” By the way, the zero lopping just happened a few weeks ago and price inflation is 100 percent for the new money.

Maduro’s policies only serve to drive the Venezuelan economy further into a Marxian hellhole. Venezuelan business owners must keep quiet because if they decide to “simply dismiss people. Much of the action happens secretively as companies try to avoid punishment by the government, which has been jailing those it believes are flouting the rules.”

Socialism isn’t like the free market which progresses peacefully. Socialism requires a bureaucratic boot on the neck of business. “Apart from the astronomical rise in wages, companies have limited ability to adapt, thanks to restrictive controls.” Zerpa writes. “Food operations are closely monitored as the government provides them imported raw materials. More than 500 supermarkets and stores have been fined and 200 managers and workers detained since Maduro’s announcements, according to Cedice, a private-property watchdog group.”

Maduro seized a cardboard plant and a pharmaceutical company for not toeing the government’s line. Even businesses with steady payrolls like banks, education, and construction are expected to be hammered by the new edict, because “large firms have collective-bargaining agreements subject to government scrutiny.”

Aurelio Concheso, a labor expert at Fedecamaras told Bloomberg, “The impact can be devastating; it can consume a whole company’s capital.”

Murray Rothbard wrote in The Free Market in 1988,

It is conventional among economists to be polite, to assume that economic fallacy is solely the result of intellectual error. But there are times when decorousness is seriously misleading, or, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, “when speaking one’s mind becomes more than a duty; it becomes a positive pleasure.” For if proponents of the higher minimum wage were simply wrongheaded people of good will, they would not stop at $3 or $4 an hour, but indeed would pursue their dimwit logic into the stratosphere.

Maduro is indeed pursuing his “dimwit logic into the stratosphere.” His country has no food or necessities and soon it will have no jobs.

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Can California Conservatives Kill the High-Speed Rail Boondoggle?

Train constructionThe same folks trying to scale back California’s massive gas taxes are now taking aim at the state’s budget-busting, behind-schedule high-speed rail project.

Carl DeMaio, a former member of the San Diego City Council (and a former contractor for the Reason Foundation, which publishes this website), announced this week that he’s introducing a brand new ballot initiative that would force the governor to stop all activity on the proposed bullet train (currently under construction in the Fresno area) and spend any remaining money on other transportation projects.

When we last took note of the bullet train, everything was spiraling out of control. Costs had ballooned up to at least $77 billion (three times what citizens were told when they approved a bond for the project a decade ago) and delays have pushed the opening all the way back to 2033. It’s a disaster that Gov. Jerry Brown insists on defending as some sort of legacy.

DeMaio’s new ballot initiative would kill the train, but it doesn’t stop there. His proposal is essentially a follow-up to Proposition 6, up for vote this fall. Proposition 6 would roll back gas taxes and vehicle fees passed last year and would require a public vote to implement any future gas tax or vehicle fee increases.

The ad blitzes for and against Proposition 6 have already begun. If you’re a Californian, you may already be seeing “No on 6” ads popping up in your social media feeds. (This Angeleno has been seeing them all week on Facebook.) The opposition ads warn that the passage of Proposition 6 threatens funding for roads and bridges. “Crumbling roads and bridges” is the phrase officials defending the gas taxes have been hitting over and over.

The reality, though, is that millions and millions of dollars of revenue collected by the gas taxes are being directed away from those “crumbling roads and bridges.” As Christian Britschgi noted back in April, the revenue from the gas tax increase from last year is being used to fund 28 transit projects that had nothing to do with repairing roads and bridges. This revenue is actually being used for pet rail projects, including a revamp of the rail network here in Los Angeles to prepare for the 2028 Olympics. So in reality, the gas tax was making drivers across the state subsidize pet train and mass transit projects.

DeMaio’s new initiative addresses that problem with a “lockbox” proposal that forbids revenue from gas taxes to be used for any projects other than those involving roads.

But California has lots of taxes, and his plan doesn’t forbid using all of it for other projects. The new initiative would allow car sales taxes to be devoted to all types of transportation projects, including mass transit, bike lanes, and other types of programs.

Read DeMaio’s new ballot initiative here. He submitted the initiative to the attorney general’s office Tuesday to request a title and summary to begin the process of collecting signatures, with a goal of getting it on the 2020 ballot.

Bonus link: The Reason Foundation analyzed all 11 ballot propositions that Californians will be considering on Election Day in November. Read what we have to say about them here.

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Soros Confirms Funding Ongoing Trump-Russia Hunt By Ex-Feinstein Staffer And Fusion GPS

  • George Soros has admitted to funding an ongoing private Trump-Russia investigation conducted by Fusion GPS and a former FBI agent and staffer for Dianne Feinstein

  • In February, it emerged that Soros and a group of “mystery donors” had funded a $50 million “war chest” – as revealed in a House Intel Committee report

  • The former FBI agent and Feinstein staffer, Dan Jones, reportedly claimed to be working with former MI6 agent Christopher Steele as part of the ongoing investigation

An aide to George Soros, Michael Vachon, has confirmed a February report that the left-wing billionaire financier has funded an ongoing effort by Fusion GPS and ex-Feinstein staffer and former FBI agent, Dan Jones, to privately continue the Trump-Russia investigation, according to the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross. 

Vachon made the admission to the Washington Post‘s David Ignatious – who has previously been accused of being a deep-state conduit. 

Ignatius notes at the end of a Tuesday article downplaying GOP assertions that the Obama administration and Clinton campaign actually colluded with Russia to defeat Trump; “Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson declined to comment for this article. Soros’s spokesman, Michael Vachon, told me that Soros hadn’t funded Fusion GPS directly but had made a grant to the Democracy Integrity Project, which used Fusion GPS as a contractor.” 

Daniel J. Jones

The Democracy Integrity Project – according to the Caller, was formed in 2017 by Jones. 

The Post column confirms what a Washington, D.C., lawyer named Adam Waldman told The Daily Caller News Foundation about a conversation he had with Jones in March 2017.

Waldman was an attorney for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. He also worked in some capacity for Christopher Steele, according to text messages he exchanged with Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence panel.

In what the Post’s Ignatius noted was an “incestuous” relationship, Steele, a former MI6 officer, has done work for the Kremlin-linked Deripaska in the past.

Waldman told TheDCNF that Jones approached him on March 15, 2017 through text message asking to meet.

“Dan Jones here from the Democracy Integrity Project. Chris wanted us to connect,” he wrote, seemingly referring to Steele. At a meeting two days later, Waldman said that Jones told him that he was working with Steele and Fusion GPS and that their project was being funded by Soros and a group of Silicon Valley billionaires. –Daily Caller

This effort was originally revealed in February and reported on by The Federalist, after a series of leaked text messages between Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and lobbyist Adam Waldman suggested that Daniel J. Jones – an ex-FBI investigator and former Feinstein staffer, was “intimately involved with ongoing efforts to retroactively validate a series of salacious and unverified memos published by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent, and Fusion GPS.“

In short, Jones is working with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to continue their investigation into Donald Trump, using a $50 million war chest just revealed by the House Intel Committee report.

Jones also runs the Penn Quarter Group – a “research and investigative advisory” firm whose website was registered in April of 2016, days before Steele delivered his first in a series of Trump-Russia memos to Fusion GPS. Jones also began tweeting out articles suggesting illicit ties between the Trump campaign and Russia as early as 2017.

Steele’s work during the 2016 election culminated in the salacious and unverified 35-page “Steele dossier” used to obtain a FISA warrant against then-President Trump (which, as we reported on Friday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper leaked the details to CNN‘s Jake Tapper prior to the seemingly coordinated publication by BuzzFeed).

An April House Intel Report notes that in March 2017, Jones told the FBI that he was working with Steele and Fusion GPS, with funding to the tune of $50 million.

“In late March 2017, Jones met with FBI regarding PQG, which he described as ‘exposing foreign influence in Western election,’” reads the House Intel report. “[Redacted] told FBI that PQG was being funded by 7 to 10 wealthy donors located primarily in New York and California, who provided approximately $50 million.”

“[Redacted] further stated that PQG had secured the services of Steele, his associate [redacted], and Fusion GPS to continue exposing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election,” reads the report, which adds that Jones “planned to share the information he obtained with policymakers…and with the press.”

And the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross noted at the time, Jones “also offered to provide PQG’s entire holdings to the FBI” according to the report, citing a “FD-302” transcript of the interview he gave to the FBI.

Of note, during Congressional testimony last year when Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) asked Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, if he was still being paid for work related to the dossier, Simpson refused to answer. And while the dossier came under fire for “salacious and unverified” claims, a January 8 New York Times profile of Glenn Simpson confirmed that dossier-related work continues.

Sean Davis of The Federalist reported in February that Jones’ name was mentioned in a list of individuals from a January 25 Congressional letter from Senators Grassley and Graham to various Democratic party leaders who were likely involved in Fusion GPS’s 2016 efforts. The letter sought all communications between the Democrats and a list of 40 individuals or entities, of which Jones is one.

Still no word on whether Jones and Fusion GPS – funded by Soros – have been able to find a connection between Trump and Russia, but we’re sure they’ll keep plugging away. 

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Buyer-Beware: The Fed Always Hikes Until It Breaks Something

With today’s Federal Reserve rate-hike as baked into the cake as it can be, all eyes will be on the expectations for the future and the word “accommodative” and, no doubt, stocks will charge on ahead aimlessly flouting the fact that “well The Fed wouldn’t be hiking if they were worried” and/or “The Fed will immediately switch to easing if stocks take a dip.”

However, while investors will pore over the Federal Reserve’s dot-plot projections today, looking for any and every silver lining, Bloomberg’s Ye Xie warns that it would be wise not to lose sight of the bigger picture. Regardless what the Fed does and says today, equity investors should expect lower returns and higher volatility in the coming months and years.

Via Bloomberg,

Two more hikes by year-end shouldn’t spell the death-knell for stocks, on the face of it. After all, estimates of the Fed’s real neutral policy rate are on the rise — using market-based measures — and the Fed itself has suggested the short-run neutral level could be higher.

Nevertheless, as policy becomes less accommodative, the Fed no longer suppresses risk premiums.

Note that Fed tightening typically leads equity volatility by two years or so. Remember the January-February volatility shock? It came 25 months after the first Fed hike. So expect more such episodes, even if they’re not of the same magnitude.

A higher risk-free rate suggests that P/E expansion, which has contributed a large portion of the equity gains since 2009, is coming to an end. That means the market has to rely entirely on earnings growth for gains.

Alas, earnings estimates look too optimistic. Sure, tax cuts are offering a boost, but there seems to be little discount for the trade war or wage pressures. A simple regression analysis suggests earnings estimates should be growing about 6%, given trade growth around 4%. Instead, EPS is seen rising 23% over 12 months — the outlier red star in the chart below.

Trading can be categorized into four phases.

  • “Reflation” is characterized with high readings on manufacturing PMIs and wages,

  • “Goldilocks” is when PMIs are high but wage gains are restrained,

  • “Stagnation” is the reverse of Goldilocks and

  • “Slowdowns” see both low PMIs and weak wages.

See the median monthly equity returns and 30-day volatility for each, since 1990:

Stocks perform best during Reflation periods, which often come after a recession. Goldilocks — where we’ve been the past year — comes second, with Stagnation and Slowdown episodes the worst.

Currently, the PMI is above 90% of its historical experience, and unemployment is drifting ever lower. That suggests a transition toward Stagnation is looming.

It doesn’t necessarily mean the bull market’s demise — that would probably take a recession on the horizon, and/or wage gains accelerating towards 3.5%. What it does means is the easy part of the bull market is over…

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Kavanaugh Issues Response To Latest Sexual Allegations

Defying expectations that he would fold amid the barrage of last minute accusations lobbed at him by what as of this morning are three women, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh harshly criticized “last-minute smears” in prepared testimony for Thursday’s Senate hearing on the alleged sexual assault when he was a high school student.

“Such grotesque and obvious character assassination — if allowed to succeed — will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country,” Kavanaugh said in a statement released ahead of Thursday’s planned Senate Judiciary Committee hearing (full statement below).

Kavanaugh has been accused by California college professor Christine Blasey Ford of holding her down and trying to take her clothes off when they were in high school.

“I categorically and unequivocally deny the allegation against me by Dr. Ford,” Kavanaugh said, adding that “I have never done that to her or to anyone. I am innocent of this charge.”

“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process. This effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. I am here this morning to answer these allegations and to tell the truth. And the truth is that I have never sexually assaulted anyone—not in high school, not in college, not ever.”

“The allegation of misconduct is completely inconsistent with the rest of my life. The record of my life, from my days in grade school through the present day, shows that I have always promoted the equality and dignity of women.”

In the latest twist of the Kavanaugh drama, earlier on Wednesday, Washington resident Julie Swetnick raised a new round of allegations of sexual misconduct in a sworn statement released by her lawyer, Michael Avenatti. Kavanaugh’s statement did not reference to her accusations or an allegation by another woman who claims he exposed himself to her at a drunken party at Yale University.

Separately, Chuck Grassley said that the Kavanaugh hearing will go forward as scheduled although that may change if Ford gets cold feet again and changes her mind in the last minute as a result of the new developments.

Kavanaugh’s full statement is below (pdf link).

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One Trader’s Tough Talk To The Fed: Hike Faster Or Get Off The Pot

In challenges involving tortoises and hares, slow-and-steady is apparently the optimal strategy. However, in the monetary policy race of life, the slow-and-steady pace of rate-hikes is increasingly throwing shade and casting doubt on The Fed’s self-confidence of its own forecasts for growth and employment.

As we stand, Fed Funds futures imply a very modest chance of a rate-hike in 2020, and OIS imply an actual rate-cut in 2020 – both well below the expectations of a notable hike implied by The Fed’s dots…

Former fund manager and FX trader Richard Breslow feels the same, inferring that Jay Powell should hike faster or higher… or get off the economically exuberant narrative pot.

Via Bloomberg,

The FOMC is going to raise rates this afternoon. I assume that doesn’t come as a shock to anyone.

It’s a shame that it won’t. Because my preview of the meeting is not about what they will likely do, but is a rush to the postscript that whatever it will be just isn’t enough.

Other than accepting the misguided notion that they must gently hold our hands and guide us forward with an utter lack of upset, it’s hard to conclude policy makers are actually doing the job at hand.

Look at the numbers. Listen to their words. Accept that they have the added motive of wanting greater daylight between current rates and zero. There is absolutely no reason any longer for this laboring 25 basis point timidity. Other than their seeming lack of faith in their very own forecasts. Which is ironic, because the greatest speculation going in, and undoubtedly what will be most discussed afterward, are the dot plot guesses. Made all the more distracting by the addition of 2021 to the forecast horizon
Fed speakers across the spectrum have been pushing back on the notion that the neutral rate is as low as has been assumed for a number of years.

They claim, perhaps dubiously, that they are not unnerved by the flattened yield curve. We’ve even been treated to speculation that a period of restrictive rates may make sense.

And yet, there is real debate whether the word “accommodative” will stay in the statement or not. If it is gone, assume the market will believe they have far less commitment to their words than we are meant to think.

Equity markets are strong as bulls. Even if naysayers find idiosyncratic patches to complain about. Bond yields are higher, but it’s fair to argue that the 10-year Treasury yield languishing below May’s highs is causing no one any pain. The dollar is under pressure.

I keep reading that the rate hike is so completely priced in, that as soon as they hike, the currency will be sold. I’m not sure why the wait, if that’s your view, but the notion is definitely out there. No apparent imminent threat of a runaway Bloomberg dollar index. In fact, bullish calls on emerging markets are becoming pretty common. What market, you have to ask, is in need of mollycoddling?

Are trade and tariffs a potential threat? I think so, but keep getting told the knock-on effects are less than I think. And if anyone tells you the fear is stopping corporations from investing, ask about share buybacks and equity cushions. In any case, whether the Fed does more or as expected today, it will have no effect whatsoever on this situation. In a peculiar way, it might actually stoke animal spirits. And possibly help other central banks get off the dime.

I’m sure this is all asking more than is likely to happen. But just like policy makers wish futures markets would take them at their word, their policy decisions should also match their communications.

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New Kavanaugh Accuser Says Nominee Abetted Gang-Rape, Groped Girls, and Spiked Punch With Drugs at High-School Parties

A woman who allegedly partied with Judge Brett Kavanaugh as a teenager has come forward with serious allegations about him and his former classmate Mark Judge. According to the sworn declaration from Julie Swetnick, both Kavanaugh and Judge abetted the drugging and gang-raping of girls at parties in the early 1980s. Swetnick also implies that Kavanaugh and Judge participated in the assaults themselves.

As Georgetown Prep students, both Judge and Kavanaugh were known to “‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties” with “drugs and/or grain alcohol so as to cause girls to lose their inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No,'” Swetnick says in the declaration, which was released on Twitter this morning by lawyer and recent TV news fixture Michael Avenatti.

Swetnick says she “witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh, and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys” and that she has “a firm recollection of boys being lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”

Around 1982, Swetnick states, she herself was a victim “of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.” (It is unclear whether she is saying that Kavanaugh or Judge personally assaulted her.) She adds that she believes she was drugged via Quaaludes dropped into her drink.

Swetnick says she told others about the incident at the time and knows of other witnesses who can confirm her statements.

“We demand an immediate FBI investigation into the allegations,” Avenatti tweeted this morning. “Under no circumstances should Brett Kavanaugh be confirmed absent a full and complete investigation.”

Swetnick—a graduate of Gaithersburg High School in Maryland and a former employee of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Mint, the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. State Department—says she first met Kavanaugh and Judge in 1980 or 1981 at a house party. She describes the pair as “joined at the hip” and says she “consistently saw them together in many social settings.” She estimates that she attended “well over ten house parties” from 1981 to 1983 where both were present.

“On numerous occasions at the parties, I witnessed Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh drink excessively and engage in highly inappropriate conduct, including being overly aggressive with girls and not taking ‘no’ or an answer” as well as “fondling and grabbing girls without their consent,” Swetnick says in the declaration. She continues:

I observed Brett Kavanaugh drink excessively at many of these parties and engage in abusive and physical aggressive behavior toward girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent, “grinding” against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls’ clothing to expose private body parts. I likewise observed him be verbally abusive toward girls by making crude sexual comments to them that were designed to demean, humiliate, and embarrass them.

After calling Kavanaugh a “mean drunk,” Swetnick says that she not only witnessed this behavior herself but heard about it from other women and that his claims in a recent Fox News interview about being virginal and mostly sober during his high school years are “absolutely false and a lie.”

Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford—the first woman to accuse Kavanaugh of sexually predatory behavior in high school—are both scheduled to be questioned before members of the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow.

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Trump Accuses China Of Interfering With US Election

Roughly a week after Axios published a leak claiming that President Trump was preparing to launch a new “broadside” against China that would tie “Russia and China” together, the substance of this mysterious hint has finally been revealed.

During remarks before the UN Security Council (the US, one of five permanent members, assumed the chairmanship this year) Trump accused China of launching election interference efforts similar to those purportedly orchestrated by Russia. China’s goal, Trump said, was to stop him from winning reelection in 2020.

“They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president to challenge China on trade. And we are winning on trade. We are winning on every level,” Trump said.

“We don’t want them to meddle or interfere in our upcoming election.”

However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there would be “no question” that the midterms will be safe from foreign influence.

Back in July, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said China, along with Russia, Iran and North Korea, “are penetrating our digital infrastructure and conducting a range of cyber intrusions and attacks against targets in the United States,” though he added that Russia “has been the most aggressive foreign actor.” 

Following the Pentagon’s decision to approve a shipment of $300 million worth of military aircraft to Taiwan – not to mention the still-simmering trade war – we imagine Chinese President Xi Jinping won’t take too kindly to this.

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