Rex Tillerson, the leading candidate to become Trump’s Secretary of State, has close ties to Russia that go back many years. His relationship with Russia even helped land Tillerson the top job as Exxon CEO. …read more
Source: Exxon’s Rex Tillerson has deep ties with Russia
By EconMatters
By EconMatters
Economic theory suggests that ultimately somebody still needs to go out of business in the oil industry, and after 2 plus years of massive declines in prices we seem to be right back where we started with this oversupply crisis in the oil market.
US Oil Production seems to have bottomed at 8.4 Million Barrels per day and is rising again, and headed for moving back above 9 Million Barrels per day in 2017. The Trump administration seems to be bullish for more US Oil Production, and I am not sure that is good longer term for the overall price in the market.
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Source: Somebody Has To Go Out of Business in the Oil Market (Video)
By Tyler Durden
With many of the key cabinet positions in Trump’s administration having been filled, one major post remained open: that of Energy Secretary. However according to Bloomberg, the mystery is almost over as Donald Trump has narrowed his search for energy secretary to four people.
Which is amusingly ironic, because five years ago, Perry wanted to eliminate the Energy Department: in an infamous 2011 Republican primary debate, Perry forgot that the Energy Department was one of the three federal government agencies he wanted to do away with. The other two were the Commerce and Education Departments. According to some pundits, the gaffe may have cost him a shot at the party’s 2012 nomination.
Texas’ longest-serving governor Gary was indicted in 2014 for abuse of power and coercion after threatening to veto funds for a Travis County office that investigates corruption unless the district attorney, who had pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated, resigned. Another potential conflict of interest: Perry serves on the board of Energy Transfer Partners LP, the company whose pipeline project has drawn opposition in North Dakota and has become a rallying cry from environmentalists. While the Obama administration has stalled the project, Trump has said federal approvals for energy infrastructure need to come quicker.
As BBG notes citing two sources, two Democratic senators from energy-producing states – Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia – are also in the mix, along with Ray Washburne, a Dallas investor and former chairman of the Republican National Committee. If Trump picks any of the four he will break with recent tradition of putting scientists at the top of the Energy Department. Among other things, the agency is responsible for policies on the safe handling of nuclear material.
Some details on how the final four was selected: Trump met with former presidential candidate Perry and Washburne while attending the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore on Saturday. It was at least the second time he’d spoken to the two men for potential roles in the new administration. Trump met with Heitkamp at Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 2, and is scheduled to meet with Manchin in New York. Jay Martin Cohen, a retired Rear Admiral of the U.S. Navy, is said to be Trump’s choice for Under Secretary for Nuclear Security.
Two leading scientists have run the energy department during the Obama administration: Ernest Moniz, the incumbent, is a nuclear physicist who previously headed an energy initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His predecessor was self-professed nerd Steven Chu, a Novel laureate who directed the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology.
The lack of yet another career scientist at the head of the DOE likely means that the US push against “climate change” will become decidedly more muted over the next few years.
Trump has promised to unleash domestic oil, gas and coal production, largely by rescinding “job-killing” rules and environmental regulations, without detailing specific plans for the Energy Department and its nuclear-heavy …read more
Source: Rick Perry Is Trump’s Top Pick To Head Energy Department
President-elect Donald Trump is set this week to detail how he will remove himself from his businesses to avoid conflicts of interest. …read more
Source: Trump: I’m turning away ‘billions’ to avoid biz conflicts
President-elect Donald Trump is set this week to detail how he will remove himself from his businesses to avoid conflicts of interest. …read more
Source: Trump: I have ‘the right’ to do business deals
Boeing has finalized its agreement to sell 80 airplanes to Iran Air, despite staunch opposition. …read more
Source: Boeing sells 80 jets to Iran Air in $16B deal
By Tyler Durden
In a move that is certain to infuriate those who see Trump as nothing more than a puppet of the Kremlin, moments ago NBC reported that Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil and late entrant into the SecState race after his first meeting with the president elect this past Tuesday at the Trump Tower, has been picked by Trump to serve as his next Secretary of State.
JUST IN: Trump to name Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, sources say https://t.co/kthwSkGc0j pic.twitter.com/vZmWztv0qn
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 10, 2016
As NBC adds, Tillerson met Saturday with Trump at Trump Tower in New York, the president-elect’s spokesperson confirmed. The selection of Tillerson comes after Trump and his transition team spent weeks searching for someone to fill the post of the top U.S. diplomat. Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani were reportedly in the running. Giuliani said Friday he had taken his name out of consideration.
The 64-year-old Texas oilman, whose friends describe as a staunch conservative, emerged as a Secretary of State contender only last week following a meeting with Trump, when it was speculated that he would consider the offer “due to his sense of patriotic duty and because he is set to retire from the company next year.” Tillerson’s appointment would introduce the potential for sticky conflicts of interest because of his financial stake in Exxon: he owns Exxon shares worth $151 million, according to recent securities filings.
A quick biographical sketch of Tillerson courtesy of the WSJ:
The son of a local Boy Scouts administrator, Tillerson was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. He attended the University of Texas, where he studied civil engineering, was a drummer in the Longhorn band and participated in a community service-oriented fraternity.
He joined Exxon in 1975 and has spent his entire career at the company.
For most of his adult life, he has also been closely involved with the Boy Scouts of America, even occasionally incorporating the Scout Law and Scout Oath into his speeches. Mr. Tillerson played an instrumental role in leading the organization to change its policy to allow gay youth to participate in 2013, Mr. Hamre said. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates subsequently moved to lift the organization’s ban on gay adult leaders as Boy Scouts president in 2015. “Most of the reason that organizations fail at change is pretty simple: People don’t understand why,” Mr. Tillerson said in a speech after the 2013 decision, urging leaders to communicate about the policy to help make it successful. “We’re going to serve kids and make the leaders of tomorrow.”
* * *
However it is not his Boy Scout exploits that will be the key talking point for pundits in the coming days, but rather his close relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
According to the WSJ, few U.S. citizens are closer to Mr. Putin than Mr. Tillerson, a recipient of Russia’s …read more
Source: Trump Picks Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson As Secretary Of State
By Tyler Durden
Authored by Glenn Greenwald via The Intercept,
The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets – a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that).
Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming – with no basis whatsoever – that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie – and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth – was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.
Clinton camp chief strategist @benensonj: “I've seen things” in Wikileaks emails “that aren't authentic” #ThisWeek https://t.co/LPQJBfACqz
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 23, 2016
That the emails in the Wikileaks archive were doctored or faked – and thus should be disregarded – was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, the Atlantic and Newsweek. And, by design, this Fake News spread like wildfire all over the internet, hungrily clicked and shared by tens of thousands of people eager to believe it was true. As a result of this deliberate disinformation campaign, anyone reporting on the contents of the emails was instantly met with claims that the documents in the archive had been proven fake.
The most damaging such claim came from MSNBC’s intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance. As I documented on October 11, he tweeted what he – for some bizarre reason – labeled an “Official Warning.” It decreed: “#PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.” That tweet was re-tweeted by more than 4,000 people. It was vested with added credibility by Clinton-supporting journalists like Reid and Frum (“expert to take seriously”).
All of …read more
Source: "Hard-Core Clinton Fanatic" Manufactured "Viral Fake News" That MSNBC Used To Discredit Wikileaks
By The_Real_Fly
It’s happening. After careful analysis of all the media punditry and the ‘leaks’ coming out from the CIA, I can only conclude that there is a concerted effort taking place to invalidate the U.S. elections, in an effort to unseat Donald Trump. Last night the Washington Post reported a leak from inside the CIA, saying they had a report that showed evidence that Russia hacked the elections in order to election Donald Trump. They’re being very specific about that point. Pay attention.
Source: Reuters
The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.
The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning the election.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”
The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week.
The CIA, in what the Post said was a secret assessment, cited a growing body of evidence from multiple sources. Briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, the Post quoted officials as saying on condition of anonymity.
In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.
President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. But Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.
A CIA spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report.
In response to the Washpo article, the Trump campaign issued the following statement.
“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s representatives said in a statement attributed to the transition team. “The election ended a long time ago … It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.'”
Bob Baer, former CIA and current ‘Hunting Hitler’ shill, said in an interview today that if the evidence regarding Russia hacking the elections are true, then the only logical thing to do is to hold new elections.’
‘If the evidence is there, I don’t see any other way than to vote again.
Bear in mind, this is all in response to the Wikileaks revelations about the abject corruptness of both the DNC and the Hillary Clinton camp, via the Podesta emails. …read more
Source: THE CIA MOVES TO INVALIDATE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS BY BLAMING RUSSIAN HACKING
By Tyler Durden
The Obama administration admitted nearly 85,000 refugees into the United States in fiscal year 2016, the highest number since 1999. Moreover, as we noted back in September, Obama’s administration has laid the groundwork to increase that number even further in fiscal year 2017 to 110,000 (see “Hillbama Administration Plans To Admit At Least 110,000 Refugees In 2017“).
Of course, not every state is doing their “fair share” to house the massive influx of immigrants with Pew Research Center recently pointing out that the top ten states are taking in 54% of refugees.
As Pew points notes, California, Texas and New York alone resettled 24% of incoming refugees while Nebraska took in the most on a per capita basis.
California, Texas and New York resettled the most refugees in fiscal 2016 (which began on Oct. 1, 2015, and ended Sept. 30, 2016), together taking in 20,738 refugees, or about a quarter (24%) of the U.S. total. Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, North Carolina, Washington, Pennsylvania and Illinois, which each received 3,000 or more refugees, rounded out the top 10 states by number of resettled refugees. Overall, 54% of refugees admitted to the U.S. in 2016 were resettled in one of these 10 states.
At the other end of the spectrum, some states and the District of Columbia took in few or no refugees in fiscal 2016. Arkansas, the District of Columbia and Wyoming resettled fewer than 10 refugees each, while two states – Delaware and Hawaii – took in none.
In fiscal 2016, Nebraska (76), North Dakota (71) and Idaho (69) resettled the most refugees per 100,000 residents. Other states like Vermont (62), Arizona (60) and Kentucky (54) far exceeded the U.S. national average of 26 refugees per 100,000 residents.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was the top country of origin for refugees resettled in the U.S. in 2016 while Syria was a close second.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (16,370) was the top origin country among refugees resettled in 2016. Some 10% were resettled in Texas, 7% in Arizona and 6% in both New York and North Carolina.
However, Syrian refugees – the second-largest origin group with 12,587 resettled in fiscal 2016 – have garnered more attention from state leaders, with 31 governors opposing this group’s resettlement in their states. Even so, resettlement patterns of Syrian refugees across the states are similar to the national average. California had the largest number (1,450) of resettled Syrian refugees in fiscal 2016, followed by Michigan (1,374) and Texas (912).
And while the Obama administration has announced plans to admit even more refugees in 2017, we suspect president-elect Trump may have other ideas.
Trump: Will suspend immigration from areas in the world where there is proven history of terrorism against U.S. https://t.co/rHkpUr7xiL
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) June 13, 2016
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