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Monday, January 22, 2018

The FISA Court Has Been Lied To And It Knows It.

Normally I would be adverse to posting such a lengthy video. Quite simply I think it is the obligation of the blogger to condense the information but this video does not lend itself to that simply because it explodes one bomb after another.
Did you know that the FBI shared personal information on American citizens with private contractors? The FISA court has been aware of that for sometime and indeed is not happy about it. On April 26, 1917 it releasedt a 99 page memo spelling out its concerns. You may view it here. Scroll down to page 85 to see this discussed. The fact that this document has been in the public domain for almost a year speaks volumes germane to the level of journalistic competence in contemporary America.
Another argument for posting the video is Joe DiGenova himself. He is a superb raconteur. This interview could have been written by John LeCarre or Tom Clancy.


 

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Ohio's First Gas-Fired Power Plant Goes On Stream.



This is a big deal! We have been writing about Ohio's Utica Shale since drilling began in 2010 because of the potential benefits to Ohio and the country as a whole. Most of the drilling and pipeline news appeals to a small segment of the population so understandably it doesn't get much media play. With literally and no, I do not mean virtually, ceremony Switzerland-based Advanced Power announced the beginning of operations of its 700MW gas-fired plant built at a cost of $899 million in Carroll County. The international contractor, Bechtel Corporation, was the prime contractor on the job. According to Bechtel, the Carroll County power plant meets National Ambient Air Quality Standards and will produce 50% lesser carbon dioxide and 90% less sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide when compared to a conventional coal-fired power plant.
Served by an American Electric Power Company 345 kV transmission line and the Tennessee Gas Pipeline system, the power plant sells into the PJM Interconnection market. The Carroll County Energy plant, as it’s called, is owned by a consortium of equity investors that include Advanced Power, TIAA-CREF, Chubu Electric Power Co., Ullico and Prudential. The plant produces enough electricity to service about 750,000 home and has a full time workforce of 22 people. Without the need to unload, move and prepare coal for burning and the onerous labor of disposing of the ash, plant operation is not labor intensive.
This the second generation of gas fired power plants which have made natural gas the most efficient fossil fuel around. Natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plants use two turbines to generate electricity in tandem, with the waste heat from a primary gas turbine being used to drive a secondary steam turbine.In other words it's like the slaughter house that uses all of the pig except the squeal.

The Wreck That Is Hillary Clinton.

I'm surprised this parody hasn't got more views.

Monday, January 8, 2018

Admiral Mike Rogers-Unsung Hero

  One of the many uncovered stories in the media--including Fox--is the story of Admiral Mike Rogers, head of the NSA who is retiring in a few months.
  The Last Refuge has covered the service of Admiral Rogers.
  If you'll recall, there was quote a stir when Rogers went to visit Trump on November 17, 2016.
  Why?
  Because we now believe that Admiral Rogers was apparently the only head of a US government security agency who was willing to let Trump in on the secret that he was being--and had been--surveilled in his own quarters.
   After Rogers visit, Trump promptly moved his operating headquarters On November 18 from Trump Tower to his golf club in New Jersey.
  Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wanted the Admiral fired because of "performance issues," according to US News & World Report. They also had complaints that they were concerned about a "division" in deciding how to handle intelligence matters among the heads of the departments.
Meanwhile, the 57-year-old admiral's recent trip to New York to meet with President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday also caused "consternation" for the Obama administration, the Post said, in part because it appears unprecedented for an officer like Rogers to conduct such a meeting and not inform his superiors.
   Earlier in the year, you may recall that Devin Nunes held a press conference after being called to the White House to receive certain unidentified information. The Last Refuge, which has the best rundown I've read on this situation reminds us:
House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Devin Nunes, then held a brief press conference  and stated he has been provided intelligence reports brought to him by unnamed sources that include ‘significant information’ about President-Elect Trump and his transition team.
   So the information was seeping out.
   Sundance writes that he/she believes that Rogers learned of the subterfuge in 2016, told the court on October 26 of the violations, then made this unscheduled visit to Trump Tower without informing those snakes who were working on destroying Trump from within the country.
  This is a story of enormous importance that needs to be told. Sundance's post at The Last Refuge is well worth reading in its entirety.
  Maybe somewhere down the line we'll hear this story more broadly. As for now, its doubtful.
  One thing's for certain.
  We do owe a vote of thanks to Admiral Rogers for his service and, IMHO, to Sundance at The Last Refuge for his/her tireless reportage & insight
  There's more on General Flynn's story too, over there
  There's a reason Trump has surrounded himself with military leaders and his own security team.

Go ahead. Run Oprah.

    Hoosierman knows I wasn't always on the Trump fan wagon but the past year has proven to be shocking in our POTUS's pursuit of conservative principles. I simply don't believe ANY other elected Republican would have done what Trump has done in one year. He seems impervious to the vicious smears of the press.
    Now, I tried to watch those ridiculous Golden Globe awards. I really, really did.
    After about 15 minutes of watching heaving bosoms, slit skirts, self congratulatory lauds, long haired men wearing sunglasses in a lighted room and an underlying contempt for their audience (translation: people like me), I realized I had only seen 1 of the shows up for awards. (That series would be the kiddie scare fest Stranger Things. )
    The truth is that anything that comes out of Hollywood stinks. As an aficionado of British television, I can tell you why.
    Hollywood products are banal, predictable and terribly written. I don't know how much writers get paid but it's too much. I heard on the news today that Seth Myers has something like 24 writers for those couple jokes he does on some show and last night. 
    Hollywood also assumes we are all as stupid as they are.
    That, I think, is what bores me so much: the assumption that we just want shoot em up, bloody action flicks with lots of sex and shapely bodies.
    I had the misfortune of being blackmailed to see the latest Star Wars flick; I almost fell asleep except that every now and then a big boom shook my seat.
  This morning when the news informed us that Hollywood is goo-gooing over Oprah as POTUS, I was not surprised.
   Admittedly Oprah does have a few things in common with Trump; she's an entrepreneur who has made a fortune in reality tv, but I say go ahead and run her as your presidential candidate. 
  Crow about her eloquence, her "hugs," her weight. 
  Bleh. To many of us, Oprah represents everything that is wrong with the Left Coast. They're self absorbed nitwits who tweet from their hot tubs while sipping whiskey. They haven't a clue what our lives are like.
   Even if we don't count Oprah's cozy relationship with Weinstein, she has a past, too, including a disastrous sex scandal at the school she ran in South Africa.
  Same goes for Michelle Obama-that nasty condescending woman who only loves America when one of her family is in office.
  Looks like Joe Biden, of he of the toupee and fake white teeth, is the best hope of the Democrat loons.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Weed, Greed And The Investor Class

I remember working with a particularly opinionated carpenter who refused to allow his wife to buy a hoe. Eventually he relented with the proviso that it be kept out of sight and that she never ask him to use it. He explained that as a youngster and a teen he had hoed so much tobacco that he swore once he left his dad's farm he would never even own a hoe. Maybe if my poor friend, Marvin, had been more adequately compensated he would have been more receptive to the joys that hard work and industry bring although, candidly, he was something less than the personification of the Protestant Ethic.
Today, tobacco farmers have fallen on hard times but even in the heady days of the New Deal and the Great Society it was a rough row to hoe. A clever mechanism to raise the price of tobacco was introduced in FDR's New Deal and it remained in effect until 2014. At the inception of the program each tobacco grower was given an acreage allotment. Said growers were only allowed to plant that allotted number of acres in tobacco. This, of course, created an artificial shortage thus raising the price of the tobacco and ultimately the compensation. As the Carolinas, Kentucky, and Virginia began voting Republican the growers and everyone associated with that industry became morally suspect tantamount to Walmart shoppers and NRA members until that opprobrium was expressed in the cessation of federal largess.
Thursday's announcement from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he would no longer participate the the prosecutorial misfeasance so dear to the hearts of his predecessors hit Washington insiders like a snow bomb. "The attorney general of the United States has just delivered an extravagant holiday gift to the drug cartels... " moaned Rep Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach, California. As idiotic as the Congressman's comments were they were very much in tune with much of the Twitter hyperbole. The action was called a war on federalism, an attack on state's rights and of course an assault on all people of color.


Attorney General Session has simply nullified the Cole Memo which more or less withdrew the DOJ for the battle against marijuana. Authored in 2013 by Deputy Attorney General James Cole the memo expressed the desire that states “prevent diversion of marijuana outside the regulated system,” prohibit access to marijuana by minors, and replace the “illicit marijuana trade that funds criminal enterprises with a tightly regulated market in which revenues are tracked and accounted for.”

All of sudden conservatives united with libertarians in their love of " a tightly regulated market in which revenues are tracked and accounted for." Of course the alleged medical value was touted but also a consistent theme of grass roots demand for legal weed. One must admit that the has been a push toward liberalizing marijuana laws but how much of that is grass root and how much of that is investor driven? Several times, both online and on television, I heard the astounding claim that legalization of marijuana would create a $40 billion industry and 400,000 jobs. Hmm. That is some industry! It generates $100,000 per employee! Talk about marginal productivity! Poor Marvin was born too soon! Had he been hoeing Mary Jane instead tobacco he would have been a millionaire before he was 30. Of course the grass is always greener in sunny California.
Oh, Uncle Tom, what makes the grass so green?
Horse shit, Little Eva, Horse shit.
Eventually I was able to trace the 400,000 jobs claim to the Aceview Group where cannabis meets capital.
Our Mission: To forge a principled and profitable industry from the ashes of cannabis prohibition.
It is probably accurate to state that Aceview speaks for California's financial elite. The author O. Henry once described New York City as an aviary overpopulated with jays. He never saw Silicon Valley. If ever there was a group of people so full of themselves. Enough, I'll let them tell you how smart they are.


"We've raised the bar so that only serious players can qualify" How damned egalitarian! As it turns out Aceview is also a political player and smart enough to be bipartisan when it come to handing out cash. It seems Congressman Rohrabacher earns his keep!
Congress                                            Senate
Buck, Kenneth R (R-CO) $1000 Bennet, Michael F (D-CO) $5000
Carroll, Morgan (D-CO) $400 Gillibrand, Kirsten (D-NY) $1000
Cohen, Steve (D-TN) $3000 Harris, Kamala D (D-CA) $1000
Crist, Charlie (D-FL) $1000 Heck, Joe (R-NV) $1000
DeGette, Diana (D-CO) $1,000 McGinty, Katie (D-PA) $2500
Gallego, Ruben (D-AZ) $1,000 Paul, Rand (R-KY) $5000
Grijalva, Raul M (D-AZ) $1,000 Van Hollen, Chris (D-MD) $1000
Heck, Dennis (D-WA) $1,000 Wyden, Ron (D-OR) $6000
Huffman, Jared (D-CA) $1,000
Lee, Barbara (D-CA) $1,000
Lieu, Ted (D-CA) $1,000
McClintock, Tom (R-CA) $3,350
McDermott, Jim (D-WA) $1,000
Murphy, Pat (D-IA) $5,000
Perlmutter, Ed (D-CO) $2,000
Rohrabacher, Dana (R-CA) $5,000
Rosen, Jacky (D-NV) $1,000
Schwartz, Gail (D-CO) $1,000
Sinema, Kyrsten (D-AZ) $1,500
Smigiel, Mike (R-MD) $500
Swalwell, Eric (D-CA) $1,000
Titus, Dina (D-NV) $1,500
Lest you think the Aceview Group is the only player in the investment community let me cite the investment web site, Seeking Alpha.
The cannabis industry has been very event driven ever since legalization began at the start of 2014 in Colorado. The article, "The State Of Marijuana Stocks And What To Look For In 2018," highlights how industry events have helped shape the market for cannabis stocks. Typically, where we've seen political events trigger moves for marijuana stocks, it was industry events that took on the spotlight this year. Beer, wine, and spirits giant Constellation Brands (STZ) made a minority investment into Canadian-based Canopy Growth (OTCPK:TWMJF), which not only triggered a move for the market in general but also more so for Canadian issuers specifically.
Second, and most recently, the first NYSE listed marijuana ETF went live during Christmas week on December 26th. The ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF (NYSEARCA:MJX), which was previously an ETF targeting Latin American real estate, currently invests in 30 different national and international companies involved in the space.
This includes companies that have a hand more closely tied to the plant and others that are more "pick and shovel" style companies. The majority of its holdings are in 12 companies right now with over 60% of these stocks being Canadian listed (and dually listed in the US with the five letter symbol ending in "F")



So far the pot industry has yet to produce any company tantamount to RJ. Reynolds, Lorillard Tobacco or American Tobacco and it probably never will. Tobacco was grown by dirty, shirtless, men in bib overalls who labored in the hot sun. Legal marijuana is raised in a controlled environment by sissies in white lab coats. The pot industry aims for mass consumption but controlled production, production that is a tightly regulated in which revenues are tracked and accounted for. Kudos to CNBC who cut through the states right and free market sloganeering and delivered a balanced perspective on the business aspect of "big pot".
In an interview that is not in the library Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and Melissa Lee shot down the notion that in order to reap the supposed benefit of medical marijuana large quantities of weed must be grown. They noted that already there exists a huge array of synthetic cannabinoids that can be produced in a lab, negating the argument that Jeff Sessions poses a national health risk.


Kevin Sabet, is a  professor of psychiatry, a former member of the Obama Administration and a contributor to the Huffington Post. He makes clear in this interview that those who should fear Jeff Sessions the most is the investor class.It fair to say his views are close to my own.



Don’t blame Jeff Sessions for enforcing the law.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Video: Iranian Insurgents Attack the Elite Revolutionary Guard.

Not a Bill Still fan? Okay, fast forward to the 50 second mark. According to Still this video was shot on New Years Day and smuggled out of Iran. It show the protesters? rebels? attacking members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and showing little mercy.

The Calm Before the Storm? Over 9000 Sealed Indictments in Federal Courts

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What the hell is going on? As of Dec. 22, 2017, there were 9,294 sealed indictments in federal courts . This includes 1,224 in the central district of California, which includes Los Angeles; 194 in Washington; and 248 in the southern district of New York. It also includes 225 for the southern District of Indiana which does not begin to compare population wise with any of the aforementioned jurisdictions.  These data are collected  by researchers and gathered from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service of the federal judiciary. More.