PrairiePundit

Tucker Carlson:
Democrats Outraged a Terrorist Can't Vote Some of them also are seeking the votes of illegals and objection to a citizenship question on the census.  They seem to be in a desperate attempt to replace their shrinking base after they have alienated much of middle America.

Benny Avni:
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Beyond shuttering the nuclear program, America wants to see an end to the Islamic Republic’s ­regional adventurism, worldwide terror networks, provocative missile tests and human rights violations at home.

Bottom line, Iran must renounce ambitions that harm America and our allies and interests — not to mention the Iranian people.

Putting the squeeze on oil ­exports, however, isn’t without risks. The administration calculates that any resulting spike in oil prices will be offset by increased production from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Iran’s regional archenemies.
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With its economy faltering, Tehran will be forced to make a do-or-die choice: Renegotiate the nuclear deal, this time with real curbs on its illicit programs, or face regime collapse.

The only problem for Trump: Democratic presidential candidates threaten, as soon as elected and in office, to zag right back to the old nuclear deal.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Z…

Washington Examiner:
A former top FBI official said a repository of Hillary Clinton's emails was obtained by the Obama White House.

As part of a court-ordered discovery related to Clinton’s unauthorized email server, Bill Priestap was asked by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch to identify representatives of Clinton, her State Department staff, and government agencies from which “email repositories were obtained" by the FBI.

He divulged a nonexhaustive list, which included the Executive Office of the President.

Other people mentioned were former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, Jacob Sullivan, and Justin Cooper, former Clinton information technology staffer Bryan Pagliano, the State Department, Secret Service, and Washington-based law firm Williams and Connolly.

Priestep answered questions in writing and under oath as part of U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth's ruling earlier this year that discovery could commence examining the former secretary of …

Asia Times:
Back in March of last year, the Kim Jong Un regime told a group of South Korean special envoys that it was willing to discuss denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and normalization of its relations with the US. According to the interlocutors, Pyongyang also promised that it would refrain from conducting further missile and nuclear tests so long as its prospective talks with Washington continued.

That pledge was apparently intended to lock Washington into negotiations until the Kim regime got what it wanted. But the US has flipped the script, as it now appears that North Korea is the one bound to a negotiation process that can only move forward when Washington’s demands are met.

If Pyongyang follows through on its recent threats to walk away from the negotiations and resume testing of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, it will destroy any chance it has of obtaining sanctions relief, and its actions could trigger a new round of international sanctions. On the ot…

Sharyl Attkisson:
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Here are 10 reasons why Russia election interference seems set to become the most enduring scandal of the Obama administration.

Missed opportunity. Perhaps the best shot at disrupting Russian interference came as early as fall 2015. That’s when the FBI supposedly detected successful efforts by Russian hackers to breach Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers. For reasons unknown, the systems and others remained vulnerable to further attacks.

By July 2016, the DNC and FBI both had concluded Russians were responsible for additional hacks. Yet, the DNC reportedly refused to allowthe FBI to examine its servers and data in a timely fashion and — for reasons unexplained — the FBI failed to confiscate them. Obviously, when national security is at stake, the FBI does not need permission to examine evidence. A senior law enforcement official told CNN the DNC’s withholding of crucial evidence “caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusi…

Forbes:
Solar panels and wind turbines are making electricity significantly more expensive, a major new study by a team of economists from the University of Chicago finds.

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) "significantly increase average retail electricity prices, with prices increasing by 11% (1.3 cents per kWh) seven years after the policy’s passage into law and 17% (2 cents per kWh) twelve years afterward," the economists write.

The study, which has yet to go through peer-review, was done by Michael Greenstone, Richard McDowell, and Ishan Nath compared states with and without an RPS. It did so using what the economists say is "the most comprehensive state-level dataset ever compiled" which covered 1990 to 2015.

The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: "All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy," they write.
...
Solar and win…

NY Times:
How the Supreme Court’s Decision on the Census Could Alter American Politics The Supreme Court is reviewing whether 2020 census respondents should say whether they are citizens. Political maps based only on the citizen population could tilt in favor of Republicans. Democrats have been gaming the census for years in order to get more seats in the House by using non-citizens to boost their numbers in mainly blue states.  It looks like a form of cheating to try to overcome their shrinking base of voters.  Stopping the cheating would also disincentivize the Democrat push for more illegal immigrants in the country.

Houston has a well-earned reputation for diversity.  Nowhere is that more clear than in the medical field.  After spending three weeks in a critical care unit at the Houston Methodist West facility and two more weeks at a rehab unit, it is inarguable.  What I found is that those who earned the right to wear the uniform in these facilities were competent regardless of that national origin.  It was demonstrated by leading doctors and nurses.

What was absent from this group was any hint of race relations that matched the Democrat politicians' attitude toward race.  There was not a hint of any white nationalists nor was there a hint of any resentment toward the white patients.  It was all about providers operating professionally and patients being treated with respect.

I have come a long way from when I arrived at the emergency room in grave condition and my loved ones were told to be prepared for life and death decisions.  My vital organs were shutting down and the muscles in most of…

Washington Post:
Judges seem skeptical Trump is illegally profiting from his D.C. hotel One judge suggested the president may be driving up business at other local hotels because of people who might come to protest Trump’s policies and choose not to stay at his hotel. This case is another example of Presidential harassment.  It is like arguing that Obama profited from the sale of his books after he became President.

Jonathon Turley:
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The New York state charges that Vance filed against Manafort appear to run afoul of state and federal protections against double jeopardy, or being prosecuted twice for the same underlying conduct. The timing of the charges alone seemed right out of the playbook of “The Producers” character Max Bialystock, the corrupt Broadway figure who insisted that in New York the rule is “if you got it, flaunt it, flaunt it.” Accordingly, Vance waited just minutes after the Manafort sentencing to hit him with state charges, guaranteeing the maximum exposure and credit for his effort.

The problem is that the case appears not only constitutionally flawed but ethically challenged, coming right out of the Max Bialystock School of Prosecution. I have long been one of the longest and loudest critics of Manafort. He is a corrupt and despicable person who deserves the two sentences that could keep him in jail for the rest of his life. However, it is not his crimes but his association …

Washington Examiner:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of the Trump administration by deciding federal officials can detain immigrants at any time for possible deportation after they have served their time in the U.S. for other crimes.

The 5-4 decision reversed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said officials have to detain these immigrants immediately or they are exempt from ever being detained.

Justice Samuel Alito delivered the majority opinion for the court, and he was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. Justices Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.

Alito wrote that in the past, the court has "held time and time again, an official's crucial duties are better carried out late than never."

He also rejected the argument from lawyers representing the immigrants involved in the case that they are subject to mandatory detention only if they are arres…

Fuel Fix:
The Houston Ship Channel region is shipping out more than 35 percent of the nation's crude oil exports after the Houston area roughly tripled its volumes from 2017 to 2018.

All of the Texas Gulf Coast accounts for about 80 percent of the nation's crude shipments with the Beaumont and Corpus Christi regions ranking second and third nationwide, according to a new report from Morningstar energy analyst Sandy Fielden.

This Texas dominance won't end anytime soon. Most of the new crude production is coming from West Texas' booming Permian Basin and there's a race to build a bevy of new export terminals along the Texas coast and even offshore of Texas. The proposed offshore terminals are in deeper waters that can more easily handle the world's largest crude vessels.

"The limit to world appetite for U.S. crude is unknown today, but current bets on export infrastructure assume it won't be reached soon," Fielden said.

Nationwide crude exports last…

Fox News:
California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes filed a major lawsuit seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages against Twitter and a handful of its users on Monday, accusing the social media site of "shadow-banning conservatives" including himself to influence the 2018 elections, systematically censoring opposing viewpoints and totally "ignoring" lawful complaints of repeated abusive behavior.

In a complaint filed in Virginia state court on Monday, obtained by Fox News, Nunes said Twitter was guilty of "knowingly hosting and monetizing content that is clearly abusive, hateful and defamatory – providing both a voice and financial incentive to the defamers – thereby facilitating defamation on its platform."

The lawsuit alleges defamation, conspiracy, and negligence, and seeks not only damages, but also an injunction compelling Twitter to turn over the identities behind numerous accounts he says have harassed and defamed him.

A…

Donald Trump, Jr.:
As Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives becomes ever more flagrant and overt, the old arguments about protecting the sanctity of the modern public square are now invalid. Our right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack, necessitating a vigorous defense against the major social media and internet platforms.

From “shadowbans” on Facebook and Twitter, to demonetization of YouTube videos, to pulled ads for Republican candidates at the critical junctures of election campaigns, the list of violations against the online practices and speech of conservatives is long.

I certainly had my suspicions confirmed when Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, “accidentally” censored a post I made regarding the Jussie Smollett hoax, which consequently led to me hearing from hundreds of my followers about how they've been having problems seeing, liking or being able to interact with my posts. Many of them even claimed that they've had to…

D.C. McCallister:

House Democrats’ ‘Anti-Hate’ Resolution Is A Stress Test For Criminalizing Their Opposition

Leftists have refashioned 'hate' into a political tool to silence opposition. Christians and conservatives are routinely called racist, sexist, homophobes, on no evidence but their disagreement with the left.

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Leftists have refashioned “hate” into a political tool to silence opposition. It has long been an effective Democratic tactic. In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney was falsely accused of being a sexist because he had professional binders of resumes of prospective female employees. He lost the women’s vote, partly because of the sexist label.

It’s become a running joke in political discourse that whenever conservatives call out leftist ideology, they’re immediately called a racist, sexist, or homophobe. It would be funny if it weren’t so bad, especially if a generalized definition of hate based on emotions eventually becomes an argument for law.

Will th…

Susan Ferruccio:
Ambitious proposals to end climate change and provide healthcare for everyone, seen as socialist by Republicans, have failed to win the support of even half of the House Democratic caucus, effectively dooming any chance of floor consideration.

Support appears to have plateaued for both the Green New Deal resolution as well as the Medicare for All national health insurance proposal.

The Green New Deal, introduced Feb. 7 by rising freshman star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., calls for a complete overhaul of the nation’s housing, transportation, businesses, and agriculture to end carbon emissions and to stave off climate change.

But of the 235 Democrats in the House, Ocasio-Cortez's bill has the backing of just 90 of her colleagues, and picked up just one new co-sponsor since Feb. 25. That's a little more than a third of the Democrats and far fewer than the 218 needed to pass it without any GOP support.

The Medicare for All bill, introduced by Rep. Pramila Jay…

Rick Moran:
The Trump administration announced that they are in the process of finalizing plans that would ease the draconian restrictions on oil and gas exploration put in place by the Obama administration on land protecting the sage grouse. It should be noted that energy companies would not be able to run wild and start destroying sage grouse habitat, although you'd never know it listening to radical greens. Reuters: Conservation groups denounced the move as a handout to the oil and gas industries, while an industry group praised it. The new rules, announced by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, fits within the Trump administration’s broader plan to increase energy production on federal lands by loosening environmental regulations. Former President Barack Obama’s 2015 plan to protect the ground-dwelling sage grouse imposed restrictions to development in their habitat but fell short of placing the bird on the endangered species list, which would have imposed far mo…

Hot Air:
It appears Texas Democrats are hoping the 2018 Beto-mania (which failed – but gave them hope) transitions into Joaquin-mania in 2020. There’s a lot of tea leaf reading going on – but Texas Monthly is pretty sure San Antonio Congressman Joaquin Castro is going to challenge U.S. Senator John Cornyn.
“We’ll be making an announcement in the very near future,” said Matthew Jones, Castro’s campaign adviser.

“This instantly makes the race very competitive,” Bill Miller, an Austin lobbyist and longtime political observer, said of Joaquin’s potential entry into the race. Running in tandem with his brother, who announced his candidacy for president on January 12 in San Antonio, would only benefit both candidates, Miller said, and “doubles up on all the positives.” When asked if Cornyn was vulnerable, Miller said, “Every Republican senator up for election next year is vulnerable.”

“This is quite an important development,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Vir…

World Israeli News:
Israeli media reports that Egyptian officials were enraged last Thursday when news reached them of the rocket attack over the Tel Aviv area from the Gaza Strip at the very moment they were acting as mediators to the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

“If Israel decides to start a wide-scale operation in Gaza, [Egypt] won’t stop the Israeli attacks. Even if Israel ends your rule in Gaza by assassinating every single one of you and reconquer[ing] Gaza, Egypt and its allies won’t lift a finger to stop the Israeli response,” said a senior Egyptian negotiator at the meeting, according to daily newspaper Israel Hayom.

“You’re endangering our lives,” the official added. “Gazans’ blood is on your hands.’

The senior Egyptian official told Israel Hayom what he had said at the meeting and that his delegation had been blindsided by news of the rocket attack, which arrived just as the Egyptian team was relaying potential terms of a ceasefire agreement from Israel to Hamas leaders.

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David Druker:
Leading Democrats are elbowing President Trump out of the way and commanding more of the media's attention, a development that ironically is helping Trump by reducing the relentless and often harsh spotlight on him.

The Democratic rise to power in the House of Representatives plus the party’s spirited presidential primary is competing with Trump for news coverage and on social media platforms, according to data gathered by the Washington Examiner. This shift from the previous two years, when the president dominated the political conversation, is a welcome relief for many top Republicans. They are convinced that Trump cannot win re-election if the campaign is a referendum on him.

“We’ve had our best two months in the last two years — since Elizabeth Warren announced for president on Dec. 31. For the first two years, all we talked about was Trump,” said Jeff Roe, the veteran Republican strategist who managed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in 2016. “The gam…

grabie news:
YOUNG AMERICANS HILARIOUSLY EXPLAIN WHY LOWERING THE VOTING AGE TO 16 IS A TERRIBLE IDEA

'When I was 16, my friends and I bought a live lobster, put it on a leash, and walked it around the neighborhood at 2am'

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When I was 16, I sucked a drinking glass to my face for 10 minutes and gave my lower face a giant hickey that took 3 weeks to heal
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When I was 16 I would have given anything to be able to have a tattoo of Axl Rose’s face on my butt cheek
... There is much more.

I think they should raise the voting age back to 21 unless the person is in the US military.

Washington Post:
To combat anxiety over whether to have kids, waves of people turn to indecision therapists

Parental indecision has been Ann Davidman’s area of expertise since 1991. Now, she’s found herself busier than ever, as 30- and 40-somethings realize the biological clock is ticking. I never doubted the choice of having kids and have also been delighted to have eight grandkids.  I love them all.  I have noticed that some liberals worry about having kids because of their anxiety about "climate change."  That should make elections much more interesting in about 20 years.  I am much more optimistic about the future than they are.

NY Times:
‘It Is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Venezuela Voters President Nicolás Maduro sent doctors door-to-door to warn the ill and elderly that care would be cut off unless they voted for the governing party, said 16 Cuban physicians who worked in Venezuela. These doctors are not paid for their work.  Typically the money for their services is sent directly to the Castro regime in Cuba.  But the story does show how socialism works to coerce voters.  You will support us and lose your health care.  It is one more reason to never support government healthcare.

Rick Moran:
Cartels have long been in the business of facilitating the illegal entry of aliens into the U.S.  But the coyotes have discovered a way to drastically lower their overhead costs while maximizing profit. It's called the "conveyor belt" system, where the cartels use buses to bring Central American asylum-seekers through Mexico right to the U.S. border.  They then walk across the border and turn themselves in to border patrol officers as they seek asylum.  This is a massive abuse of U.S. asylum laws, but it is tolerated by the courts, as well as Republicans and Democrats. Washington Post: Paying up to $7,000 per adult with child, families are transported to staging areas at ranches and hotels in southern Mexico, where they are organized into bus groups and rushed north along Mexican highways, "stopping only for food, fuel and bathroom breaks," according to the U.S. law enforcement documents. ... Within 72 hours of leaving the staging areas, the buses arrive…

Washington Free Beacon:
Any legal effort to challenge the constitutionality of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV) will have to wait until enough states formally adopt the measure, according to numerous constitutional and legal experts on the matter.

Opponents to NPV have long consoled themselves with the fallback idea that even if enough states might eventually join the compact, it would likely be found unconstitutional in the courts.

The NPV is an agreement between states that enter into the compact to change the way a state casts all of its Electoral College votes, typically awarding all of them to the candidate that wins a plurality in that state. Instead, once the votes are tallied across the country, states in the NPV would cast their Electoral College votes to the candidate who won the most votes nationwide, regardless of whether the candidate carried the state.
... The results of such a move would give outsized import to states like New York, California, and Ill…

Monica Showalter:
With the press largely focused on the college cheating scandal and cooking up new ways to Blame Trump for the mosque massacre in New Zealand, some real news is going largely unnoticed: "US Job Opening[s] Soar To All Time High: 1.3 Million More Than Unemployed Workers."

According to Zerohedge's Tyler Durden:

After a modest slowdown in job openings which started in September and continued through November, today's JOLTS report — Janet Yellen's favorite labor market indicator — for the month of January showed an unprecedented surge in job openings across most categories at the start of 2019, with the total number soaring from an upward revised 7.479 million (from 7.335 million), to an all time high 7.581 million, smashing expectations of a 7.225 million print. ...

The job creation is so high under President Trump's tax cut and deregulatory regimen that there are more jobs than workers to fill them. The quitting rate is higher, too, and that mea…

Breitbart:
The recent death toll of Christians in Nigeria has reached 120 with this week’s slaughter of more than 50 by Fulani Muslim militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria, the Christian Post reported.

The Fulani jihadists, who have become a greater threat to Nigerian Christians than the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, stormed the villages of Inkirimi, Dogonnoma, and Ungwan Gora in the Kajuru Local Government Area last Monday, destroying 143 homes, killing 52 people, and wounding dozens more.

The assailants reportedly split into three groups, the first of which fired upon the people, the second set fire to buildings, and the third chased down people fleeing from the scene. Victims of the assault included women and children.

Monday’s incident followed an attack the day before in the Ungwan Barde village in Kajuru, where 17 Christians were killed and dozens of homes were burned.

In the first week of March, Muslim extremists massacred more than 30 Christians in Karamar village, sett…

Jerusalem Post:
Yossi Langotsky feels that poetic justice has been achieved. After many years of being treated as a “public enemy” by the security establishment because of his repeated warnings about the tunnel threat, he is suddenly appreciated and welcome.

Three weeks ago, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot invited him to hear his views on the danger of Hamas tunnels in Gaza and Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon and how to combat them.
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“After years of ignoring my advice it was refreshing to be invited by Eisenkot,” Langotsky told The Jerusalem Post. “I salute him.”

Langotsky is quite a character and has no fear of public battles about his beliefs and principles. He is a geologist by profession and a fighter in his soul.

In the Six Day War he led a reconnaissance unit in the battles against the Jordanian army in Jerusalem. For his bravery he was decorated with one of IDF’s highest medals. Later he created the special operations department in Military Intelligence and commanded…

NY Times:
Beto O’Rourke Is 46. Bernie Sanders is 77. Does Age Matter Anymore for Democrats? Democrats have won the presidency with younger nominees like Obama, Clinton and Kennedy. But age may be relative in 2020, with many younger voters preferring the septuagenarian Mr. Sanders. Anyone who still believes in socialism or communism is too ignorant of history to be given the reins of power.   Then there is Beto who acts like he wants to be the leader of a doomsday cult when it comes to global warming.  I wouldn't trust either one of them.

Washington Post:
U.S. will not give visas to employees of the International Criminal Court

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States will not allow the tribunal, based in The Hague, to investigate U.S. troops or those of allies like Israel. The court is seen as made up of people with a political bias against US foreign policy in dealing with Radical Islamist and that bias is also used against Israel's resistance to radical Islamist attacks.  The US is not a party to the court and not subject to its jurisdiction.  That was a wise move by the Bush administration.

NY Post Editorial:
Having won control of the House, Democrats are opting to skip a key test of seriousness: They’re not even going to try to pass a budget resolution.

That would, after all, expose not only their divisions, but also the costs of their most-vaunted ideas, from Medicare for All to the Green New Deal.

And Speaker Nancy Pelosi can’t have that.

Budgets are a chance to show a practical vision for where you want to take the country, but a host of Democratic lawmakers and staff told Politico that any effort to agree on priorities would bring yet another public intra-party battle.

And, after the humiliating collapse of efforts to call out Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks, that battle is all too likely to wind up as a win for the lunatic fringe.

In fact, Democrats have been avoiding the normal order of business for years now. Pelosi opted against a budget in 2010, when her party controlled the White House and the Senate, too. And then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also…

streff:
AID AND COMFORT. Google Is Aiding Our Enemies And Refusing To Help Our Military This may give some impetus to the efforts of some in Washington to break up big tech companies.

Miami Herald:
The Trump administration is considering imposing sanctions on companies from third countries that facilitate the shipment of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, a senior administration official told the Miami Herald.

“The interim president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, recognized by the U.S. and Europe, where most of these companies are from, has asked us to stop these shipments and we are considering everything to be supportive,” the official said.

The Venezuelan National Assembly, controlled by the opposition, agreed to suspend the shipment of crude oil to Cuba as part of a state of emergency decree approved on Monday to respond to the chaos caused by a major electrical blackout. Guaidó published on Twitter a chart estimating that the Nicolás Maduro regime sends 47,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, the equivalent of about $2.5 million under current world oil prices.

The decision “to cut the oil supply to Cuba asserts our independence,” Guaidó wrote on Twitter. “Cuban interference m…

Matt Mackowiak:
Crowing to Vanity Fair, former U.S. Rep. Robert "Beto" O’Rourke claimed he was "born to do this" when asked if he would seek the presidency.

After a funk that lasted several months, Beto claimed his destiny as the 15th Democratic candidate to seek the presidency in 2020.

Texas Democratic elected officials responded with a shrug.

On the morning he announced his decision, 30 elected officials announced they were supporting the other Texas Democrat running for president, former HUD Secretary and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro.

Perhaps now is an appropriate time to ask this simple question: What is the single most significant accomplishment in Beto’s career?

The answer is elusive.

In three terms in Congress, he authored only one bill that became law (renaming a courthouse).

Beto has never made a consequential decision, apart from deciding to run for office.

If you study his life, it’s clear he has been the beneficiary of the exact kind of white …

Monica Showalter:
It's been a couple of weeks now, but the Left has finally come together with a "narrative" to explain why socialist Venezuela is so miserable.

In a word: Gringos. Gringo did it.

Take a look at what's coming out of the supposedly respectable mainstream magazines from the left such as The Nation and The New Republic.

There's this one, saying both sides are at fault here, and sanctions are the worst, so let's all get along now.

There's this one, claiming that sanctions themselves are the cause of Venezuela's misery and are hypocritical to boot, given the imperfections of Latin America's other leaders and democracies, a piece loaded with lies laid thick, with the writer, Mark Weisbrot, going back full force to his old Marx Brainrot persona.

There's this one, claiming that Venezuelans don't want any U.S. help.

There's also this one claiming Venezuelans wouldn't dream of changing their vile socialist government; they just lo…

Bloomberg/Rig Zone:
Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to reduce the cost of pumping oil in the Permian to about $15 a barrel, a level only seen in the giant oil fields of the Middle East.

The scale of Exxon’s drilling means that it can spread its costs over such a big operation that the basin will become competitive with almost anywhere in the world, Staale Gjervik, president of XTO Energy, the supermajor’s shale division, said in an interview.

Development, operating and land acquisition costs will be “in and around $15 a barrel,” he said on the sidelines of the CERAWeek Conference by IHS Markit in Houston. West Texas Intermediate futures traded at almost $59 on Thursday. “The way we are approaching it is very unique compared to most, if not really everybody out there, as far as the scale," he said.

The shale revolution has made the Permian into the world’s largest shale field, with production topping 4 million barrels a day, almost as much as Iraq, OPEC’s second-biggest member. But the ra…

Washington Examiner:
Former British spy Christopher Steele admitted that he relied on an unverified report on a CNN website for part of the "Trump dossier," which was used as a basis for the FBI's investigation into Trump.

According to deposition transcripts released this week, Steele said last year he used a 2009 report he found on CNN's iReport website and said he wasn't aware that submissions to that site are posted by members of the public and are not checked for accuracy.

A web archive from July 29, 2009 shows that CNN described the site in this manner: “iReport.com is a user-generated site. That means the stories submitted by users are not edited, fact-checked, or screened before they post.”

In the dossier, Steele, a Cambridge-educated former MI6 officer, wrote about extensive allegations against Donald Trump, associates of his campaign, various Russians and other foreign nationals, and a variety of companies — including one called Webzilla. Those allegations…

John Solomon:
If President Trump declassifies evidence in the Russia investigation, Carter Page’s summer bike ride to a Virginia farm and George Papadopoulos’s hasty academic jaunt to London may emerge as linchpin proof of FBI surveillance abuses during the 2016 election.

The two trips have received scant attention. But growing evidence suggests both Trump campaign advisers made exculpatory statements — at the very start of the FBI’s investigation — that undercut the Trump-Russia collusion theory peddled to agents by Democratic sources.

The FBI plowed ahead anyway with an unprecedented intrusion into a presidential campaign, while keeping evidence of the two men’s innocence from the courts.

Page and Papadopoulos, who barely knew each other, met separately in August and September 2016 with Stefan Halper, the American-born Cambridge University professor who, the FBI told Congress, worked as an undercover informer in the Russia case.

Papadopoulos was the young aide that the FBI used to j…