Month: November 2018

Venezuela Pitches Petro To OPEC As Unit Of Account For Oil

Authored by Ana Berman via CoinTelegraph.com,

Venezuela will present its state-backed cryptocurrency Petro as a unit of account for crude oil trading to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2019, the country’s oil company PDVSA reports on its Twitter Nov. 7.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

The PDVSA has cited its president Manuel Quevedo, who also holds the position of Venezuela’s Minister of Oil and Mining, speaking about the future presentation:

“We will be presenting Petro to OPEC in 2019 as the main digital currency backed by oil.“

According to the PDVSA, Quevedo also added that Petro will be offered as a unit of account for global crude oil trading, noting that all Venezuelan oil will be traded for Petro.

OPEC is a global intergovernmental organization made up of 15 nations, founded in 1960 in Baghdad to develop regulation and policies for the world’s main oil exporters. According to OPEC’s website, the organization has not yet scheduled its agenda for 2019; the nearest meeting of the oil industry members will be held Dec. 6 in Vienna, Austria.

Venezuela officially launched the sale of its widely discussed oil-backed cryptocurrency at the end of October. 11 months after country’s leader announced the national coin, Petro can now be purchased directly from its official website or from six local crypto exchanges authorized by the government. However, crypto wallets for trading the coin have reportedly been suspended by Google.

As Cointelegraph has often reported, the Venezuelan government is actively promoting Petro. For instance, Maduro appealed to the county’s citizens in October, asking them to invest in gold and Petro while the national currency, the sovereign bolivar, is facing hyperinflation.

The country’s president also stated that Petro would be used for international commercial transactions starting in October 2018. Moreover, Venezuela announced that the currency would be used as a unit of account within the country, making salaries and pricing systems tied to Petro.

However, some experts, journalists, and economists are skeptical about Venezuela’s coin. A Reuter’s report claimed that Petro was not backed by oil nor mined anywhere in the country. The news agency also cited former Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez who wrote that “the petro […] only exists in the government’s imagination.”

Experts also told media outlet Wired that PDVSA, which reportedly backs Petro, had $45 billion in debt and showed no signs of any trading activity. The publication noted that this might mean the currency is only a “smoke curtain” to conceal Maduro’s recent failure to reanimate the national fiatcurrency.

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After The Correction: Stocks Remain Expensive On 16 Of 20 Indicators

After the October correction, one recurring narrative that has emerged is that investors should jump into the pool because valuations have dropped low enough to make stocks attractive. But is that true?

Well no.

According to Bank of America, while the forward P/E did fall 7.6% to 15.4x, while earnings estimates improved slightly following the worst monthly S&P 500 return since Sept. 2011 (-6.9% price return in October), the S&P 500 now trades largely in-line with the historical average P/E of 15.3x, and the ratio is now 15% below its November 2017 peak of 18.3x, where earnings estimates
improved 21% over that period.

However, despite the sell-off, stocks still look expensive versus history, particularly on backward-looking metrics (trailing estimates, P/BV, Shiller PE, etc.). In fact, as the following BofA table shows, stocks remain rich on 16 out of 20 metrics, and as has been the case for much of the past decade, are inexpensive only in terms of growth, free cash flow, and relative to bonds, although even these margins are now rapidly shrinking.

The table below is simple: it shows overvalued metrics in red, and undervalued in green. So much for he market being cheap relatively to history.

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If Chris Christie Becomes Attorney General, Pot Advocacy Could be Set Ablaze

|||CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS/NewscomAnti-prohibition activists can breathe a sigh of relief that drug warrior Jeff Sessions has complied with an order to resign from his position as attorney general. But if rumors about his replacement are true, then the sigh may be over before they know it. Two sources have reportedly told CBS that Chris Christie is on the list of names being considered for the job.

The former governor of New Jersey remained adamant for years that pot is a gateway drug. While speaking with an activist in April 2014, Christie promised to never support legalization as long as he was governor. Christie even told New Jersey residents that of legal weed was what they wanted, they could head to Colorado.

Some of them were forced to do exactly that. The parents of Vivian Wilson had to move to Colorado in 2014 in search of a treatment for the young girls’ Dravet syndrome, a life-threatening seizure disorder. Her father once asked Christie on camera to sign a bill legalizing medical marijuana in the state, lest his young daughter die:

Christie eventually signed a compromise bill permitting minors to use edibles for medicinal purposes. But after the required process of doctor visits, psychiatric consultation, and registration fees racked up costs of over $1,000, the family made the decision to leave. Christie didn’t show much remorse when told that New Jersey’s strict medical marijuana process contributed to their decision to leave.

During the 2016 Republican presidential debates, Christie promised to use the federal government to crack down on states that legalized pot. He changed his tune in 2018, however, when he stated that states were free to set their own rules for legalization.

Christie has also described legalization advocates with harsh language, at one point accusing them of wanting to “poison our kids.” He has also referred to tax revenue from legal pot sales as “blood money.”

On the bright side, in 2013 Christie signed a Good Samaritan bill that shields people who call 911 for drug overdoses from being arrested or prosecuted. The legislation also made naloxone, an opioid antagonist, available to spouses, parents, or guardians.

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Buchanan: The War For The Soul Of America

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

The war in Washington will not end until the presidency of Donald Trump ends. Everyone seems to sense that now.

This is a fight to the finish.

A postelection truce that began with Trump congratulating House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — “I give her a great deal of credit for what she’s done and what she’s accomplished” — was ancient history by nightfall.

With the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his replacement by his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, the long-anticipated confrontation with Robert Mueller appears at hand.

Sessions had recused himself from the oversight role of the special counsel’s investigation into Russiagate. Whitaker has definitely not.

Before joining Justice, he said that the Mueller probe was overreaching, going places it had no authority to go, and that it could be leashed by a new attorney general and starved of funds until it passes away.

Whitaker was not chosen to be merely a place holder until a new AG is confirmed. He was picked so he can get the job done.

And about time.

For two years, Trump has been under a cloud of unproven allegations and suspicion that he and top campaign officials colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to thieve and publish the emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

It is past time for Mueller to prove these charges or concede he has a busted flush, wrap up his investigation and go home.

And now, in T.S. Eliot’s words, Trump appears to have found “the strength to force the moment to its crisis.”

His attitude toward Mueller’s probe is taking on the aspect of Andrew Jackson’s attitude toward Nicholas Biddle’s Second Bank of the United States: It’s “trying to kill me, but I will kill it.”

Trump has been warned by congressional Democrats that if he in any way impedes the work of Mueller’s office, he risks impeachment.

Well, let’s find out.

If the House Judiciary Committee of incoming chairman Jerrold Nadler wishes to impeach Trump for forcing Mueller to fish or cut bait, Trump’s allies should broaden the debate to the real motivation here of the defeated establishment: It detests the man the American people chose to lead their country and thus wants to use its political and cultural power to effect his removal.

Even before news of Sessions’ departure hit Wednesday, Trump was subjected to an antifa-style hassling by the White House press corps.

One reporter berated the president and refused to surrender the microphone. Others shouted support for his antics. A third demanded to know whether Trump’s admission that he’s a “nationalist” would give aid and comfort to “white nationalists.”

By picking up the credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta and booting him out of the White House, Trump has set a good precedent.

Freedom of the press does not mean guaranteed immunity of the press from the same kind of abuse the press directs at the president.

John F. Kennedy was beloved by the media elite. Yet JFK canceled all White House subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune and called the publisher of The New York Times to get him to pull reporter David Halberstam out of Vietnam for undermining U.S. morale in a war in which Green Berets were dying.

Some journalists have become Trump haters with press passes. And Trump is right to speak truth to mainstream media power and to accord to the chronically hostile press the same access to the White House to which Robert De Niro is entitled. Since the days of John Adams, the White House has been the president’s house, not the press’s house.

Pelosi appears the favorite to return as speaker of the House. But she may find her coming days in the post she loves to be less-than-happy times.

Some of her incoming committee chairs — namely, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings — seem less interested in legislative compromises than in rummaging through White House files for documents to damage the president, starting with his tax returns.

To a world watching with fascination this death struggle convulsing our capital, one wonders how attractive American democracy appears.

And just how much division can this democracy stand?

We know what the left thinks of Trump’s “base.”

Hillary Clinton told us. Half his supporters, she said, are a “basket of deplorables” who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.” Lately, America’s populist right has been called fascist and neo-Nazi.

How can the left “unite” with people like that? Why should the left not try to drive such “racists” out of power by any means necessary?

This is the thinking that bred antifa.

As for those on the right — as they watch the left disparage the old heroes, tear down their monuments, purge Christianity from their public schools — they have come to conclude that their enemies are at root anti-Christian and anti-American.

How do we unify a nation where the opposing camps believe this?

What the Trump-establishment war is about is the soul of America, a war in which a compromise on principle can be seen as a betrayal.

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The FDA’s Plan to Ban Flavored E-Cigarettes From Most Stores Is Unfair and Dangerous

In an effort to curtail underage vaping, the Food and Drug Administration reportedly plans to ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes in stores that admit minors. This misguided, morally dubious policy will impede the shift from smoking to vaping, thereby endangering millions of Americans who might otherwise have made that potentially lifesaving switch.

The Washington Post reports that the new rules, which may be announced next week, will ban flavored e-cigarettes from “tens of thousands of convenience stores and gas stations across the country.” The FDA will make an exception for menthol, the Post says, “because menthol is permitted in regular cigarettes as well, and the agency doesn’t want to give traditional cigarettes an advantage over e-cigarettes in the retail setting.”

Notwithstanding that concern, the FDA is applying a double standard that favors combustible cigarettes, which are far more dangerous than vaping devices like Juul and Blu. The agency is banning the vaping products that teenagers favor from most brick-and-mortar stores while letting them continue to sell the cigarettes that teenagers smoke. While smoking has reached record lows among teenagers (and adults), data from the 2017 National Youth Tobacco Survey indicate that something like 1.4 million high school and middle school students have smoked cigarettes in the last month. Yet those products will still be available in stores that admit minors.

It is reasonable to expect merchants to verify that e-cigarette buyers are at least 18 (the minimum purchase age under federal law), just as it is reasonable to expect them to do the same with cigarette buyers. The FDA reportedly plans to require that websites selling e-cigarettes use age verification technology (something that Juul, the dominant brand, already does), which is the online equivalent of carding the kid at the 7-Eleven (although the FDA says online merchants, contrary to what you might suppose, account for a small share of sales to minors).

To take the further step of eliminating purportedly kid-friendly products from the vast majority of stores is neither reasonable nor fair to the adult consumers who have a right to buy those products. It is akin to prohibiting supermarkets and convenience stores from selling Mike’s Hard Lemonade or Jack Daniel’s Country Cocktails because you’re worried that some clerks will fail to ask people buying them for ID.

In both cases, we are talking about products that are indisputably popular among adults, even while they may also be popular among teenagers. The flavors that the FDA plans to restrict are the ones that smokers switching to vaping overwhelmingly favor, and they seem to play an important role in that process. The flavors the FDA will continue to allow in ordinary stores (as opposed to specialized vape shops that exclude minors) account for a small share of the adult market. In a recently completed online survey of more than 69,000 adult vapers, just 14 percent identified tobacco or menthol as flavors they used most often; the vast majority preferred supposedly juvenile fruit and dessert flavors.

Politicians, activists, and journalists nevertheless continue to talk as if offering adults the flavors they demonstrably want means you are deliberately targeting teenagers. “Tobacco companies have fought cutting flavors from e-cigarettes, saying they are not aimed at youths but at adults who need them as a way to transition from tobacco cigarettes,” The New York Times reports. “But health advocates point to the packaging and youth appeal of a variety of flavors, including chicken and waffles, rocket Popsicle and unicorn milk as well as fruity tastes like mango.”

I am sucking on a Juul with a mango-flavored pod right now. It is pleasantly fruity and not at all cloying. Likewise the “fruit” flavor, which leans toward cherries and berries. The mint is also pretty good. I do not care for “creme,” which is reminiscent of caramel and too sweet for my taste, or “Virginia tobacco.” It is patently ridiculous to suggest that flavors a 53-year-old might like are proof of a conspiracy to hook middle schoolers on nicotine.

I don’t think FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb buys that argument. The FDA has noted “the role that flavors…may play in helping some smokers switch to potentially less harmful forms of nicotine delivery,” and Gottlieb acknowledges the “unfortunate tradeoff” that restricting flavors entails. “In order to close the on-ramp to e-cigarettes for kids,” he says, “we have to put in place some speed bumps for adults.”

I question the moral logic of that value judgment, partly because there are other ways to reduce access by minors (such as more enforcement and better age verification) that do not create barriers for adult smokers who might be interested in switching to e-cigarettes. It is not fair that they should suffer for failures in which they played no part, especially when the cost to them, including smoking-related deaths that otherwise might not have happened, is much greater than the cost to teenagers who experiment with e-cigarettes.

“If the FDA bans or restricts e-cigarette sales in easily accessible places like gas stations and convenience stores, that is the sort of regulation that will hurt older and lower-income smokers more than anyone,” notes Competitive Enterprise Institute consumer policy specialist Michelle Minton. “While traditional cigarettes remain conveniently accessible, if heavily taxed, the FDA’s action erects new barriers to smokers obtaining harm-reducing alternatives. It simply means that fewer smokers will switch and, unfortunately, may mean an increase in smoking-related illness. This hasty, ill-considered action seems motivated more by politics than scientific evidence, sound policy, or a desire to actually save lives.”

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Trump: “What A Stupid Question That Is. You Ask A Lot Of Stupid Questions”

Having barred his CNN arch nemesis Jim Acosta from the White House, on Friday the president lashed out at another CNN reporter at the White House over his appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting AG as well as Whitaker’s views towards the special counsel investigation.

During a Friday morning gaggle with White House reporters before Trump’s trip to Paris, CNN’s Abby Phillip asked the president if he was hoping Whitaker, who previously criticized Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, would “rein in” the Russia probe. “Do you want [Whitaker] to rein in Robert Mueller?” Phillip asked.

Trump’s response left the stunned reported speechless. “What a stupid question that is,” Trump said and, just in case it was lost, repeated “what a stupid question.”

“But I watch you a lot,” Trump continued. “You ask a lot of stupid questions.”

Trump then demonstrably walked away, leaving the shocked reporters screaming more questions in his wake.

Earlier, Trump said he has not spoken to acting AG Matt Whitaker about the Russia investigation, which Whitaker now oversees. Trump defended Whitaker as a “very well respected man in the law enforcement community” but claimed he does not know him personally. “I didn’t speak to Matt Whitaker about it. I don’t know Matt Whitaker,” Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for a trip to Paris.

While Trump sought to place personal distance between himself and Whitaker, he made it clear he stood by his decision to place a loyalist in charge of the Justice Department, a move many see as an effort to seize control of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. The president also rejected suggestions that Whitaker is ineligible to serve as attorney general, a position held by some legal experts who say the Justice Department leader must be confirmed by the Senate.

The acting AG has raised eyebrows, and in some cases prediction of a constitutional crisis, because before joining the DOJ, Whitaker was an outspoken critic of Mueller’s investigation and many Democrats and legal scholars have said he should recuse himself from leading the probe. Whitaker also claimed there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian interference efforts in the 2016 election, which is the central question of the Mueller probe.

Trump lamented the criticism of Whitaker’s past commentary, saying “it’s a shame that no matter who I put in, they go after him.”

Trump then reiterated his plans to have Whitaker serve in an acting capacity, but declined to reveal who might be Sessions’ permanent replacement. He said he likes Chris Christie, who is under consideration, but said he has not spoken to the former NJ governor about the post. Christie was at the White House on Thursday for an event on prison reform but Trump said he did not speak to him.

* * *

Trump wasn’t finished, however, and during the same gaggle, he suggested he could pull press credentials from other reporters who don’t show him “respect” two days after the president suspended the press pass of CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta after a contentious exchange during a news conference.

“I think Jim Acosta is a very unprofessional man,” Trump explained and when asked how long Acosta’s credentials will be suspended, the president replied: “As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t made that decision. But it could be others also.”

Trump also went after April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks as a “loser” who “doesn’t know what the hell she is doing.”

Trump also denied claims that a video shared by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders of the Acosta incident was doctored. “Nobody manipulated, give me a break. That is dishonest reporting. All that was was a close up,” he said.

* * *
During the same gaggle,

 

 

 

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Stocks Tumble, Dollar And Bonds Spike After Navarro Crushes Hopes For A China Deal, Slams “Stench Of Goldman”

Anyone wondering what just spooked stocks, sent the dollar surging to YTD highs, and yields tumbling, look no further than Peter Navarro’s speech this morning, delivered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where president Trump’s main China advisor not only lashed out at Goldman and “globalist billionaires”, but also accused Wall Street of “shuttle diplomacy” with Beijing, while predictably blasting his archnemesis, China, and repeating the point that “economic security is national security” is the guiding principle of Trump administration, and saying that “if China stopped stealing IP it would lose its economic edge” adding that “if China undertook structural changes US asking for it would be existential change for China.”

Finally, and most important for risk assets, he has dismissed prospects of a deal, accusing Beijing of wanting to “tap dance” and engage in economic dialogue so that it can keep doing what it is doing.

This, in a nutshell is what spooked risk assets and sent safe havens like TSYs and the dollar spiking, because as Navarro’s speech confirms, there will be no breakthrough in the Trump-Xi meeting either in November, or any time in the forseeable future.

Here is a quick breakdown, courtesy of tweets from Bloomberg’s Shawn Donnan‘s who is at CSIS, summarizing what just happened:

  • Overflow crowd at @CSIS for Peter Navarro this morning…
  • Navarro begins by making point that “economic security is national security” is the guiding principle of Trump administration.
  • He also invokes McKinley’s “Patriotism. Protection. And Prosperity” and the tariffs that followed from that as a great example.
  • Navarro declares that steel and aluminum tariffs have been huge success and have been repudiation of classical economists’ gloom and doom view that tariffs are bad.
  • The Section 301 tariffs have been “brilliant” and move has been “tremendously successful” at responding to Chinese “predation”.
  • Declares that Trump’s “tough talk” has resulted in “landmark restructuring” of bad trade deals (Korus and NAFTA) “in Trump time”.
  • Navarro says US economy proving Trump is right on “all metrics”…
  • “What’s going on with this grand strategy … is a fundamental restructuring back to a strong manufacturing.”
  • “The only thing that grew in the Obama administration was our national debt.”
  • “The other thing that President Obama didn’t understand is this concept that economic security is national security.”
  • Navarro is arguing now that Trump’s reversal of Obama policies re arm sales has brought defense jobs home.
  • The big jobs are in the supply chain for those arm sales, Navarro says. “That’s what USMCA was about was getting control back of that supply chain.”

  • Argues labor gaps in US are also troubling. US now has frightening shortage of nuclear engineers. “This is frightening.”
  • Also gap in welders and pipe fitters for shipbuilding: “This is part and parcel of globalization and the globalization of our supply chains.”
  • Points to dependence on foreign sources for everything from nylon for tents to lithium for batteries. “The question is how did we get to this place?”
  • First answer is “budget sequestration” which he blames on “previous administration and Congress”.
  • Third answer is decline of defense industrial base due to forces of globalization and “unfair trade practices” of both allies and rivals like China.
  • He is now lashing out at “globalist billionaires” and “unregistered foreign agents” for conducting “shuttle diplomacy” with China to pressure Trump into some kind of deal with Xi at G20.
  • He argues that shuttle diplomacy is dangerous and would leave “stench of Goldman Sachs” on any deal Trump strikes eventually.

  • “This is not about buying more soya beans or more coal. This is structural. If you took 25 things off that list there would still be enough things to hurt us.”
  • Now mocking Chinese for denying any wrongdoing. “It’s Alice in Wonderland.”
  • Now argues that if China stopped stealing IP it would lose its economic edge. If China undertook structural changes US asking for it would be existential change for China, he says.
  • He is now dismissing prospects of a deal. Accuses Beijing of wanting to “tap dance” and engage in economic dialogue so that it can keep doing what it is doing.
  • Now mocking Promises Obama secures from Chinese for them to stop hacking US companies.
  • Deals were possible with Korea, Canada and Mexico. “We can trust them… But when it comes to China it’s Sui generis.”
  • He has another go at Wall Street and shuttle diplomacy. Urges Goldman Sachs to take its money to Dayton, Ohio.
  • “We will strengthen America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base.”

Next up: Q&A

  • Before we move on worth pointing out that what we have seen today is an insight into internal Trump administration debate re China. With his criticisms of “Wall Street shuttle diplomacy” Navarro has been aiming at Mnuchin and Kudlow as much as Hank Paulson et al.
  • Navarro now taking on Ricardo. Argues Ricardian economics all predicated on floating exchange rates. “That’s not the world we live in… Clear eyes!”
  • Andrew Philip Hunter of CSIS is asking re exit strategy from tariffs? Navarro argues that post WW2 US got into habit of trading off economic security for national security interests as helped rebuild Europe…
  • Argues geopolitical case for TPP ignores that it would have devastated auto parts industry and others.
  • Tariffs approach will “end episodically” when better deals come.
  • Navarro dodges direct question re G20 deal with China. “You’re in good hands with Donald J Trump and Robert E Lighthizer.” Dismisses prospect of deal negotiated by “anyone else”. (IE Mnuchin)
  • The Trump culture, Navarro says, is to do things from a business perspective and to seed industries rather than subsidize. “For any of you who think tariffs don’t work .. spend like an hour on the internet” and look at anti-dumping tariffs.
  • His job at White House, Navarro says, is to help create a manufacturing sector and jobs for “Americans who work with their hands”.
  • Last question: “How do you fit these pieces together?”
  • Are there other initiatives coming? Navarro says ongoing concern will be maintaining healthy defense budget. “We are at the cusp of the next industrial revolution… points to AI, space… So a deep concern is that we spend that money wisely.”
  • If don’t create growth (and econ security), Navarro ends with, US won’t have tax base needed to fund national security…

His full speech is below:

In response to the belligerent, combative speech of the “Death by China” author, safe havens have spiked, with the dollar surging to 2018 highs, 10Y yields tumbling to session lows…

… and the Dow Jones in freefall, last down -270 points as any prospects of an imminent deal with China have just imploded.

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This Sixth-Grader’s Breast Cancer Awareness Shirt Clearly Isn’t ‘Offensive.’ So Why Did the School Make Him Cover It Up?

A 12-year-old elementary school student is doing his best to support his grandmother, who’s currently fighting stage 3 breast cancer. But the school thinks his efforts are inappropriate.

Blake Coil is a sixth-grader at Roosevelt Elementary, a public school in Belleville, Illinois. Last week, he started wearing a “Hakuna Matata” sweatshirt to raise awareness for his grandmother’s cancer battle. The phrase, which many people know as the title of a famous song in the 1994 animated film The Lion King, literally translates to “no worries” in Swahili.

But the school wasn’t having it. The second day Blake wore the shirt, the principal approached him at lunchtime and asked him to lift up his jacket, says Blake’s mom, Christie Coil. Principal Craig Hayes, who Coil says was alerted to the shirt by a school monitor, told Blake he had to cover the phrase up.

When Blake got home that day, he relayed what had happened to his mom, prompting her to call the school. Hayes told her something along the lines of “it was a little offensive for school because the tata is highlighted in pink,” Coil tells Reason.

Coil wasn’t happy. “So you made him zip it up so [Blake] didn’t get to support his grandmother?” she says she asked Hayes. According to Coil, the principal told her he would take the issue up with the school board and the superintendent to see what they thought.

On Wednesday, Hayes called her back to say his position hadn’t changed. He “told me that as much as they support Blake, they do not support him wearing the shirt to school because of the tata part,” Coil says. “I asked for the reasoning in that, and he told me it was a slang word for breast.”

Hayes did not send Reason any comment in time for publication. (We will update this post if it arrives later.) But Coil fails to see how the decision makes sense. She even searched the school handbook to see if Blake, who she describes as “always want[ing] to help somebody,” was violating any rules. “It’s not offensive, and it’s not violent,” she says, adding that the shirt is simply about raising awareness.

The school had no problem handing out breast cancer awareness bracelets over a two-year period back when the school secretary was fighting the disease, she notes. And Blake’s sister, who’s just 4 years old, “can wear it to her school,” Coil adds.

In short, Blake is being punished because there’s a slight possibility some elementary school students might make an immature joke or two. Coil says she hasn’t let her son wear the shirt to school again, but that’s going to change next week. “He’s wearing it Monday,” she says.

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Trump Hints At Federal Investigation As Dems Gain Ground In Arizona, Florida And Georgia

Update: President Trump has escalated his voter fraud allegations with a double-tweet.

After earlier mocking the Democrats and vote-count shenanigans: “You mean they are just now finding votes in Florida and Georgia – but the Election was on Tuesday? Let’s blame the Russians and demand an immediate apology from President Putin!”

The president turned to more serious matters, noting that “as soon as Democrats sent their best Election stealing lawyer, Marc Elias, to Broward County they miraculously started finding Democrat votes.” He then suggests, “don’t worry, Florida – I am sending much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!”

*  *  *

After Florida launched a state-wide investigation into the ongoing vote counting in Broward County following allegations that the heavily Democratic district may have acted to suppress Republican votes, President Trump on Friday suggested that he could order a federal investigation into the vote counting in the race between Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Bill Nelson.

When asked during a press briefing on Friday whether the federal government could become involved in the vote count, Trump didn’t rule out the possibility.

“Could be,” Trump said, before complaining that late vote counting like what’s happening in Florida “always seems to go the way of the Democrats,” per the Washington Examiner.

As of Friday morning, the margin between Scott and Nelson had shrunk to approximately 15,000 votes. More than 24,700 voted in Broward county for a gubernatorial candidate but not a US Senate candidate, which has led both Democrats and Republicans to suspect that the other side is up to something. But Florida isn’t the only state where closely watched vote tallying could flip the an election outcome. In Arizona, for the first time since the polls closed, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has taken the lead over Republican Martha McSally in that state’s US senate race. After flipping 5 Democratic Senate seats on Tuesday, giving up the Arizona Seat to the Dems while losing the seat nominally won by Scott would erode Republicans’ gains in the Senate – but it wouldn’t totally cancel them out, according to the Daily Caller.

In Arizona, early voting led to more than 75% of ballots being cast by mail.

Sinema took the lead after 120,000 votes from Maricopa County were dumped on Thursday night. Sinema is now leading McSally by 9,610 votes, or 0.5%, 932,870 to 923,260.

Sinema

And as Trump highlighted in a tweet Friday morning, the fact that they’re still finding votes in Florida and Georgia suggests that something strange is going on.

Both Sen. Marco Rubio and former Trump aid Marc Caputo have shared evidence on twitter that could suggest that Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, who was first appointed in 2003 by former Gov. Jeb Bush, may have tampered with the vote. As Rubio pointed out, Nelson has retained Democratic lawyer Marc Elias to help with the recount effort. Elias has said it’s “not plausible” that so many people voted in lower level races but didn’t cast ballots in the governors’ race.

Snipes has been branded incompetent by conservatives and liberals, and also has a well-documented history of misconduct. Earlier this year, a judge ruled that Snipes had interfered in the primary race between Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her Democratic primary challenger.

The fact that Bay County, which has hammered by a Category 4 Hurricane last month, managed to count and submit vote totals on time, and Broward County couldn’t, is simply baffling, Rubio said.

“Bay County was hit by a Cat 4 Hurricane just 4 weeks ago, yet managed to count votes & submit timely results,” the Florida Republican continued. “Yet over 41 hours after polls closed Broward elections office is still counting votes?”

Something is clearly up.

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Kunstler: As Midterms Fade, The ‘Real’ Russiagate Rises

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

And so, with the midterm election in the rearview mirror, behold the rush into the next phase of Civil War 2. The Golden Golem of Greatness (aka, President Trump) finally requested the resignation of the feckless Attorney General, Mr. Sessions – a fine point as we shall see. The New York Times, of course, played it as an opportunity to litigate the constitution in their headline the day after:

Jeff Sessions Is Forced Out as Attorney General as Trump Installs Loyalist

WASHINGTON — President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday, replacing him with a loyalist who has echoed the president’s complaints about the special counsel investigation into Russia’s election interference and will now take charge of the inquiry.

Notice that in the headline and the lede The Times is trying to establish the legalistic meme that Sessions was fired rather than resigned, hoping to trigger an obscure DOJ rule that a fired AG cannot be replaced by a temporary appointment. (Well, Mr. Sessions did sign a letter of resignation stating that…uh… he resigned.) At the same time, The Times tries to establish that the incoming Acting AG, Matthew G. Whitaker, is too biased to serve, setting the table for a constitutional food fight.

Of course The New York Times is no longer a newspaper in the traditional sense, but an advocacy and propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. They’re pushing this desperate gambit because it’s clear that Mr. Trump is taking the gloves off now in this long-running battle. What’s actually at stake is whether the DOJ will prosecute the actual and obvious collusion that occurred during and after the 2016 election – namely, the misconduct of the highest DOJ and FBI officials in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign to cook up the bogus Russia-gate case, and the subsequent scramble to cover up their activities when Mrs. Clinton lost the election and they realized the evidence trail of this felonious activity would not be shoved down the memory hole by Clinton appointees.

The result has been two years with no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion and two years of DOJ / FBI stonewalling over the release of pertinent documents in the matter. There is already an established and certified evidence trail indicating that James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Lisa Page, and others (including former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI James Clapper) acted illegally in politicizing their offices. Some of these figures have been subject to criminal referrals by the DOJ Inspector General, Mr. Horowitz. Some of them are liable to further criminal investigation Many of them have been singing to grand juries out of the news spotlight.

Whether Mr. Whitaker remains in his new role, or is replaced soon by a permanent AG confirmed by the Senate, the momentum has clearly shifted. The Democrats, and especially the forces still aligned with Hillary, are running scared all of a sudden. Thus, all the bluster coming from party hacks such as Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY 10th Dist), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Mr. Nadler takes the gavel of the House Judiciary Committee in January and is promising a three-ring circus of investigations when he does. If the House moves to a quixotic impeachment effort, they will find that to be a dangerous two-way street, since Mr. Trump’s legal team can also introduce testimony in his defense that will embarrass and incriminate the Democrats. Anyway, the Senate is extremely unlikely to convict Mr. Trump in a trial.

Mr. Mueller is said to be writing his final report on Russia-gate. One might adduce that he did not turn up anything significant, since, if he had discovered treasonous collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it would have merited public action by now. You can’t uncover something like that and not act on it for more than a year. More mysterious, though, is whether Mr. Mueller even bothered to look into the well-documented misdeeds of the officials cited above. How could he not? If he failed to do so, would he not appear to be himself involved in the cover-up of their activities? The Inspector General‘s report would be sufficient to alert him.

There is a lot to get to the bottom of in all this: the mis-use of FISA court warrants, the outsourcing of US intel activities to Britain’s MI6 intel agency to spy on US citizens, the role of Hillary Clinton and her campaign with FBI and DOJ officials in providing so-called opposition research used to provoke spying operations on Mr. Trump and his associates, and to confound the performance of his duties in office. And much more.

Readers seem perplexed as to why I keep writing about Russia-gate. It should be self-evident that an attempt by the party then in power to use federal agencies to interfere in a presidential election is serious business in the highest degree. It is corrosive of the rule-of-law and the fate of the nation, and attention must be paid.

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