Tag: news

Before this morning, most people in the United States had never heard of Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand.  But, an ABC story (which we covered here) suggesting that Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may have to recuse himself from overseeing Special Counsel Mueller’s Russia probe, and that Brand would be the next inline to step into that position, changed all that.

So what do we know about Rachel Brand?  Well, we know 4 things with absolute certainty:

1. She was appointed by the Trump administration and confirmed on May 18, 2017
2. She is an active contributor to Republican campaigns
3. Democrats hate her
4. Therefore, by the transitive property, we also know with absolute certainty she is a Russian spy

 

This is how ABC described Brand:

As for Brand, she previously led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, and she most recently served as a member of the government’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. She graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, according to the Justice Department.

 

Sessions recently said she “has proven herself to be a brilliant lawyer.”

 

“She is also a dedicated public servant who is strongly committed to upholding the rule of law and our Constitution,” he added.

Of course, a couple of quick internet searches revealed far more ‘suspicious’ discoveries…

First, Brand is clearly a Conservative and has been an active contributor to several Republican campaigns in recent years, including “Ted Cruz For President” and “Ted Cruz For Senate.”

 

Moreover, Democrats hate her as evidenced by the fact that she was only confirmed in the Senate via a 52-46 vote along party lines…

…and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s opposition speech in which Brand was “branded” as just another greedy capitalist:

“…has extensive experience, years of experience, fighting on behalf of the biggest and richest companies in the world.”

 

Finally, since Democrats have been hyper sensitive, in recent hearings, to the Acting Attorney General’s authority to fire Special Counsel Mueller…

 

…an authority which could soon be passed to Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, it’s only logical to conclude that Democrats and the Washington Post will spend the weekend telling you why Rachel Brand is most likely a Russian spy.

So, what’s the over/under on how many days it takes Brand to recuse herself…two?  Four?

via http://ift.tt/2s9AYE2 Tyler Durden

For the 22nd week in a row, the number of US oil rigs rose (up 6 to 747) to the highest since April 2015.

Given the historical relationship between lagged prices and rig counts, we suspect the resurgence in rigs may begin to stall…

Oil is headed for the longest run of weekly losses since August 2015 as OPEC member Libya restored production and the surplus in the U.S. shows little sign of abating.

"Inventory levels remain stubbornly high," said Bill O’Grady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management in St. Louis.

 

"The reality is, the things that have caused this trading range remain in place. Nothing’s changed."

US Crude Production from the Lower 48 rebounded this week (after a modest fall the week before) to new cycle highs…

 

The growth in rigs has been almost entirely in The Permian…

But, as Reuters reports, while cash, people and equipment are pouring into the prolific Permian shale basin in Texas as business booms in the largest U.S. oilfield, one group of investors is heading the other way – concerned that shale may become a victim of its own success.

Eight prominent hedge funds have reduced the size of their positions in ten of the top shale firms by over $400 million, concerned producers are pumping oil so fast they will undo the nascent recovery in the industry after OPEC and some non-OPEC producers agreed to cut supply in November.

 

The funds, with assets of $286 billion and substantial energy holdings, cut exposure to firms that are either pure-play Permian companies or that derive significant revenues from the region, according to an analysis of their investments based on Reuters data.

 

"Margins will continue to be squeezed by a 15 to 20 percent increase in service costs in the Permian basin," said Michael Roomberg, portfolio manager of the Miller/Howard Drill Bit to Burner Tip Fund.

Which, despite the forecasts for increasing production, fits with OilPrice.com's Peter Tertzakian warning that shale efficiency has peaked… for now.

Learning takes time and effort. But a good education pays off.

North America’s oil industry has been in school for the past three years, studying how to become more productive in a fragile $50-a-barrel world. Many companies in the class of 2017 have graduated and are now competing hard for a greater share of global barrels.

Having said that, North America’s education on how to make oilfields more productive appears to be stalling. After a breathtaking uphill sprint, productivity data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) shows that the last few thousand oil wells in top-class American plays may have hit a limit—at least for now.

Our Figure this week shows a classic S-curve learning pattern in the mother lode of all oil plays: the Permian Basin. Slow improvements to rig productivity (2012 to 2015) were followed by a steep period of rapid learning (2015 to 2017). Eventually limitations set in and advancement quickly stalled upon mastering new processes (2017 to the present).

(Click to enlarge)

As with many things in life it’s repetition that leads to mastery. Getting to know the rocks better and using progressively better techniques to extract the hydrocarbons facilitate learning in the oil and gas business. Each subsequent well that’s drilled yields a better understanding on how to drill and extract the oil buried several kilometers beneath a prospector’s feet. Trial, error and breakthroughs through repetitive drilling have been a longstanding hallmark of this 150-year-old business.

The “light tight oil” (LTO) revolution began in North America circa 2010. It took about 30,000 wells and three years before the learning in the Permian Basin kicked in. The next 20,000 wells yielded an impressive doubling of productivity. But it was innovation from the following 10,000 wells when mastery set in; by the time the 60 thousandth well was drilled the amount of new oil produced by a single drilling rig (averaged over a month) more than tripled to 700 B/d.

Aside from learning more about the rocks, the following six factors have contributed to the tight oil learning curve:

1. Walking rigs – Assembling and dismantling rigs for each new well used to be an unproductive, time consuming process. Wrenches and bolts are passé; new rigs “walk” on large well pads needling holes in the ground like a sewing machine on a patch.

 

2. Bigger, better gear – From drill bits to motors, pump and electronic sensors, all the gear on a rig is now more powerful and more precise.

 

3. Longer lateral wells – A horizontal well is like a trough that gathers oil in the rock formation. Why stop at one kilometer when you can drill out two or three with the better gear?

 

4. Fracturing with greater intensity – Hydraulic fracturing used to be a one-off, complicated process. Today, liberating tight oil is like unzipping a zipper down the length of a lateral well section.

 

5. Smarter, better logistics – Idle time on well sites can cost tens of thousands of dollars an hour. Modern supply chain management and logistics are helping operators use every hour of the clock more cost effectively.

 

6. ‘High grading’ of prospects – Low oil prices culled the industry’s spreadsheets of uneconomic play areas. Activity migrated to high quality ‘sweet spots’, which are turning out to be more plentiful than originally thought.

How much better can it all get? 

The data in our chart, and from other plays, suggests that the collective learning from these factors may have peaked; ergo a high school conclusion might lead us to believe that the golden geese—tight oil wells drilled into prolific plays like the US Permian and Eagle Ford—may have finally finished laying bigger and bigger eggs.

But it’s not wise to be fooled into that sort of undergraduate thinking. Productivity may have stalled for now, but the learning is paying off. The rate of output growth in the new genre of light tight oil plays isn’t about to lose momentum around the $50/B mark.

Learning is infectious. And what good student starts from the proverbial “square one?” Only fools reinvent the wheel. Knowledge gained from American “tight oil” plays is spreading to other plays and has already spread north into Canada where conditions favour copycat learning. Plays like the Montney and Duvernay are already climbing up their learning curves.

All this learning sounds like bad news for oversupplied oil markets. Yet there is a flip side: The good news for North America is that not everyone is going to the same school. Those on the other side of the world aren’t drilling thousands of wells from which they can learn. They’re relying on OPEC valve closures to save their competitiveness in the old-school way of doing things.

The irony is that OPEC’s artificially supported oil price is tuition for North America’s industry. On their tab we’re learning how to produce more oil at lower prices.

via http://ift.tt/2roz4wk Tyler Durden

Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Historians of the future, huddled around their goose-fat lamps in muddy woolen cloaks, may cite this as the month that the Kardashian Dreamland formerly known as “The USA” finally lost its collective mind.

Submitted for your approval, as the late, great Rod Serling (senator from The Twilight Zone) used to say: this week’s Russia-Russia-Russia hearing on Capital Hill. I caught the final hour of this circus when freshman senator Kamala Harris (D – Cal) was hectoring Attorney General Jeff Sessions about his “contact with Russian Officials” and had to be reprimanded by the chair for her rude behavior.

Note: it’s now deemed illicit for US government officials to talk to Russian diplomats. I wonder what would happen if government officials in other lands decided that it was improper to talk with US diplomats. The Democratic Party seems to be building a case that the world would be better off without diplomats cluttering up each other’s capital cities. Hey hey, ho ho, Di-plo-macy has got to go! Now that’s a most progressive idea! Apparently, AG Sessions riled Senator Harris by pointing out that the Soviet Union collapsed nearly thirty years ago — a typical white privilege thing to say, right?

Next up was Senator Mark Warner (D – Va), Vice-Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who grilled Sessions about Russia’s electronic warfare capability. Say what?

First of all, wouldn’t Senator Warner find more enlightenment on the subject by calling the Secretary of Defense, or the top military brass, or the NSA Director to the witness table? Does he know where the duties of the US Attorney General begin and end?

 

Secondly, Is there anybody in this country with an IQ above room temperature who thinks that the USA is not similarly disposed to carry out electronic warfare? Or that all the advanced nations of the world are not toying with internet intrusions into each other’s cyber space? Perhaps this is a manifestation of the political neurosis called American Exceptionalism, the idea that we’re so unlike people in other lands that they might as well be space aliens. (A sweet idea for a new Twilight Zone episode.)

All this idiocy suggests that the Russia meme is losing its mojo and the forces dedicate to dump Trump might have to look elsewhere for some legal ground to stand on. For the moment, they’re veering into the darkling woods where obstruction of justice lives, a Blair Witch Project of politics, where any old assemblage of broken twigs is a sure sign of the lurking beast —  but perhaps that’s exactly where witch-hunting takes you.

Personally, I still believe they’ll run him over with the 25^th Amendment, which allows for simple removal of a batshit incompetent executive without the pain-in-the-ass rigmarole of due process. You just get a consensus of the highest officials in the land to agree that guy has to go, and they get him gone, and, in this case, you get yourself Mike Pence, a tranny-like Church-Lady with a hard-on for the Koch Brothers. That’ll get the country great fast, I’m sure.

Then, of course, there was the gunning down of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others on a Virginia ballfield by a disgruntled Bernie Sanders fan, of all things. Is it hyperbole to say that this incident had the tone of a first shot in a new civil war? Even the hysterical elements over at CNN rushed to put out the very brushfires they had been kindling by broadcasting the Thursday night news against the backdrop of the annual congressional charity baseball gamed held at the Washington Nationals ballpark — as if the sore-beset people of this dissolute land might be stirred from their anomie by the comforting sound of wood on horsehide. Summer’s not quite officially here yet, but who feels like dancing in the streets? It’s more like wanting to hide behind the nearest trash can.

via http://ift.tt/2s9Czd7 Tyler Durden

Last night, after Trump launched yet another furious tweetstorm intended to expose the double standard applied in the Hillary investigation compared to the Russia probe, we noted that Republicans might be well served to stop sitting around twiddling their thumbs and actually go on the offensive against an investigation that has obviously morphed into mass hysteria courtesy of free-flowing leaks from a conflicted “intelligence community” intent upon bringing down a presidency.  Here’s what we said:

Of course, until someone within the Trump administration or Republican Party smartens up and calls for the appointment of a ‘Special Counsel’ to look into Hillary’s email scandal, something that should have been done long ago, and not for retaliatory reasons but simply due to Comey’s and AG Lynch’s blatant mishandling of the investigation (a point which Deputy AG Rosenstein obviously agreed with), the Democrats have no reason to calm their mass hysteria.  Then, and only then, do we suspect that Hillary might just be able to ‘convince’ her party to exercise some form of reasonable judgement.

Now, according to a note this morning from The Hill, Republicans seem to be doing just that with several members of the GOP calling on the Special Counsel to look into whether former Attorney General Loretta Lynch illegally meddled in the Hillary investigation when she met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac in Phoenix and/or instructed Comey to refer to his case as a “matter” rather than an “investigation.”

Rather than wasting resources on investigating Trump, the GOP says the special counsel must look into whether former attorney general Loretta Lynch meddled with the FBI’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. Comey testified that Lynch told him to downplay the seriousness of the FBI’s email server investigation.

For those who missed it, here is Comey’s testimony in which he confirms that Lynch “directed” him to refer to the Hillary email case as a “matter” rather than an ‘investigation”…not to mention that ill-advised meeting with Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac just days before the Justice Department was set to announce the results of their investigation.

 

Now, and perhaps because of a recent attack which targeted Republicans and in which the shooter seemed to be fueled by rage from largely fake, anonymously-sourced new stories, it appears that the GOP is finally starting to push back.

“These special counsels have a way of going off the rails,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Az.) told The Hill. “And the ostensible purpose of the special counsel has now been essentially vitiated and everybody knows that. And so they’ve got to try to find something to do. In this case, it was almost the intent from the beginning to try to create something out of nothing. And it doesn’t work in physics, but in politics it seems to be pretty effective.”

 

“This is the most coordinated communications effort on behalf of the president that we’ve seen in a long time,” said Barry Bennett, a former adviser to Trump. “They need it — it’s tough to fight nameless, faceless quotes from people purposefully twisting these stories on you.”

 

Trump’s lead outside counsel, Mark Kasowitz responded to the Post story by decrying the “illegal” leaks, which he said had come directly from the FBI.

 

Jay Sekulow, a new member of Trump’s legal team, went on Fox News Channel to say that the leaks may have come from inside Mueller’s special counsel. Sekulow asked why the FBI is “not sending agents to people’s houses” to put an end to it.

 

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee, which chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has described as the “political arm” of the White House, has led the effort to cast doubt on the special counsel investigation.

Of course, Trump has been fairly direct and open with his feelings about the ongoing “witch hunt.”

They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

Crooked H destroyed phones w/ hammer, ‘bleached’ emails, & had husband meet w/AG days before she was cleared- & they talk about obstruction?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

 

Meanwhile, as we noted earlier this morning, even Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has grown weary of the constant leaks and what they mean for the credibility of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation….which seems to have prompted him to release the following statement:

“Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous ‘officials,’ particularly when they do not identify the country — let alone the branch or agency of government — with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated. Americans should be skeptical about anonymous allegations. The Department of Justice has a long-established policy to neither confirm nor deny such allegations.

Of course, it’s only a matter of time until the Washington Post uses to the Republican fury to allege guilt…afterall, why would they attempt to fight back if they’re innocent?  Surely it can’t have anything to do with the barrage of anonymously-sourced, fake news stories released daily with the sole intent of bringing down a Republican President while never producing a shred of actual evidence. 

via http://ift.tt/2tvPS5s Tyler Durden

Two days after Trump ceded unilateral authority on Afghan troop deployments to the Department of Defense, the Pentagon wasted on time and according to AP, the Pentagon will send 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan to support existing forces and in hopes of breaking a stalemate in a war that has now been passed on to a third U.S. President. The deployment will be the largest of American manpower under Donald Trump’s young presidency.

According to AP, the decision by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis could be announced as early as next week, and was prompted by “the rising threat posed by Islamic State extremists, evidenced in a rash of deadly attacks in the capital city of Kabul, has only fueled calls for a stronger U.S. presence, as have several recent American combat deaths.” Asked for comment, a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, said, “No decisions have been made.”

Trump’s decision Tuesday to give Mattis authority to set force levels in Afghanistan mirrored similar powers he handed over earlier this year for U.S. fights in Iraq and Syria. The change was made public hours after Sen. John McCain, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Republican chairman, blasted Mattis for the administration’s failure to present an overarching strategy for Afghanistan. McCain said the U.S. is “not winning” in Afghanistan, and Mattis agreed.

 

The finality of the decision isn’t entirely clear. While Trump has handed over the troop level decision-making, there is nothing preventing him from taking it back.

 

Mattis has repeatedly stressed that increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would take place within a broader, long-term strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan. In congressional testimony this week, he said the strategy will take into account regional influences, such as Pakistan’s role as a Taliban sanctuary. Regional powers Iran, India and China, which all have political stakes in the fate of Afghanistan, also must be considered.

The bulk of the additional troops will train and advise Afghan forces, according to the administration official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss details of the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A smaller number would be assigned to counterterror operations against the Taliban and IS, the official said.

From the Afghan side, reactions were split: Daulat Waziri, spokesman for Afghanistan’s defense ministry was reluctant to comment on specifics Friday but said the Afghan government supports the U.S. decision to send more troops. “The United States knows we are in the fight against terrorism, ” he said. “We want to finish this war in Afghanistan with the help of the NATO alliance.”

However, another Afghan lawmaker, Nasrullah Sadeqizada, however, was skeptical about additional troops and cautioned that the troop surge should be coordinated with the Afghan government and should not be done unilaterally by the United States. “The security situation continues to deteriorate in Afghanistan and the foreign troops who are here are not making it better,” he said.

The gamble to send even more troops in Afghanistan is a big one for the president who inherited America’s longest conflict with no clear endpoint or a defined strategy for American success, though U.S. troop levels are far lower than they were under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. In 2009, Obama authorized a surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, bringing the total there to more than 100,000, before drawing down over the rest of his presidency.

Trump, who barely spoke about Afghanistan as a candidate or president, concentrating instead on crushing the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, may be underestimating the potential risk he faces by sending more troops in harms way. His predecessors both had hoped to win the war. Bush scored a quick success, helping allied militant groups oust the Taliban shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, before seeing the gains slip away as America’s focus shifted to the Iraq war. In refocusing attention on Afghanistan, Obama eliminated much of the country’s al-Qaida network and authorized the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, but failed to snuff out the Taliban’s rebellion.

Obama set a cap a year ago of 8,400 troops in Afghanistan after slowing the pace of what he hoped would be a U.S. withdrawal. Nevertheless, there are at least another 2,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan not included in the official count. These include forces that are technically considered temporary even if they’ve been in the war zone for months.

That said, Mattis’ deployment of more troops will be far smaller than Obama’s.  While the new troops could raise fears of mission creep, Mattis told lawmakers this week he didn’t envision returning to the force levels of 2010-11, when Obama thought he could pressure the Taliban into peace talks. Despite heavy losses, the Taliban fought on and in recent months appear to be gaining traction.

Meanwhile, this is the kind of news that awaits Trump: there have been almost 2,400 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan since 2001. Three U.S. soldiers were killed and another was wounded in eastern Afghanistan this weekend in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

via http://ift.tt/2s9hOOl Tyler Durden

Over the years many have accused central banking of being the world’s latest (and most profitable) religion, with central bankers the only modern day priests left that still matter (to the tune of $75 trillion, the market cap of all stocks in the world).

Today, in a blog post from Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari explaining why he dissented from the latest Fed rate hike decision, he admits as much when he says “for me, deciding whether to raise rates or hold steady came down to a tension between faith and data. On one hand, intuitively, I am inclined to believe in the logic of the Phillips curve: A tight labor market should lead to competition for workers, which should lead to higher wages. Eventually, firms will have to pass some of those costs on to their customers, which should lead to higher inflation. That makes intuitive sense. That’s the faith part.“

In a surprisingly honest assessment, he then says that “unfortunately, the data aren’t supporting this story, with the FOMC coming up short on its inflation target for many years in a row, and now with core inflation actually falling even as the labor market is tightening. If we base our outlook for inflation on these actual data, we shouldn’t have raised rates this week. Instead, we should have waited to see if the recent drop in inflation is transitory to ensure that we are fulfilling our inflation mandate.”

Which inductively suggests that the rest of the FOMC is still driven by, well, faith alone. Unfortunately, this time the faith has consequences, and as Citi’s Matt King explained earlier, the Fed’s decision to not only hike rates but also to begin a $450 billion annual reduction in its balance sheet, will have “significant adjustment in valuations.”

Which is perhaps ironic, because while Kashkari’s opinion is quite objective on the topic of America’s economic realities, he continues to be disappointing blind about the Fed’s true purpose, namely to prop up asset prices, to wit:

“while some asset prices appear elevated, I don’t see a correction as being likely to trigger financial instability. Investors would face losses from a stock market correction, but it’s not the Fed’s job to protect investors from losses. Our jobs are to achieve our dual mandate and to promote financial stability.”

Which is funny, because while the priests over at the Fed continue to live in their ivory towers, everyone figured out what was going on, and as Citi said earlier this week,”the principal transmission channel to the real economy has been lifting asset prices.“

Kashkari’s full Kashsplainer can be found here.

via http://ift.tt/2sj6r4S Tyler Durden

A day after President Trump proclaimed Q2 GDP “numbers are going to be shockingly good,” The New York Fed has slashed its forecast for America’s growth to just 1.86%.

Wednesday…

“I think this quarter’s GDP numbers are going to be shockingly good given all the facts we’re seeing”

Thursday…

“I think some very good numbers are going to be announced, by the way, in the very near future, as to GDP,”

Friday…

Thanks to the collapse in housing data this morning, The New York Fed has slashed its growth expectations for Q2 GDP to just 1.86% (from 3% in March)…

NOTE – the factors weakenig the forecast are ‘hard’ data points (red squares) while the surveys are adding to GDP.

It is hardly surprising that both The Atlnata Fed and New York Fed are cutting their expectations as US macro data disappoints gravely…

Given the plunge in US Macro data, we wonder if President Trump meant the GDP numbers are going to be “shocking.”

via http://ift.tt/2ryXJCH Tyler Durden

The Washington Post has been one of the two main establishment papers in the U.S. for a while.

But it’s gotten ridiculously pro-intelligence community in the last couple of years, fawning over the intelligence agencies and quoting “anonymous sources” from the IC every single day.

The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who runs Amazon.  And Bezos has been molding the Post’s direction since he bought it.

Amazon, in turn, has been working with the CIA since 2014 to provide the agency’s cloud computing needs.

The company just launched a cloud-based service for many American intelligence agencies.

Gawker reports that Amazon’s contract with the intelligence agencies will run for an initial period of 10 years.

Bezos – already one of the world’s richest men – may soon become THE world’s richest man.

He’s also a ruthless businessman. Matthew notes at Gawker:

Megalomaniacal internet retailer Amazon began as an online seller of books—as CEO Jeff Bezos once explained it to a horrified Kansas City bookseller—because it allowed the company to gather data on affluent, educated shoppers. Their latest customer is the entire intelligence apparatus of your democracy. Checkmate!

 

***

 

Jeff Bezos, who originally wanted to call his company relentless.com, lords over Amazon with “ice water running through his veins” according to Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Brad Stone. “He’s ruthless. He identifies competitors and he can crush them” ….

 

When Amazon decided to initiate a program of exerting pressure on vulnerable book publishers for better shipping terms and higher promotional fees, it was known internally as the Gazelle Project after Bezos decreed “that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”

 

***

 

In Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, the conditions at one of Amazon’s main warehouses and distribution hubs was so bad in the scorching summer heat of 2011 that the company hired Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have ambulances and paramedics on stand-by. An emergency room doctor at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest reported Amazon to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) after having had enough of treating their employees for heat-related injuries. Air conditioning did not arrive at the warehouse until it also started to store and ship groceries.

But nothing we discussed above could possibly affect the Post’s reporting on the intelligence community … now could it?

via http://ift.tt/2sH9gzn George Washington