Free Republic

RUSH: It’s one of those days, folks — and there aren’t many — but when they happen, you need to stop, take stock and take notice. This is one of those days that is a bad day for leftists around the world. In Israel, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu won reelection for a fifth term. Now, leading up to it we got the same kind of news leading up to the 2016 race, Bibi was hated, he was despised, he was a criminal, he was a thug, he was corrupt, and there was no way. His own party hated his guts....

Of the $54 million believed to have been invested in Mantria, $17 million was returned to early investors to perpetuate the Ponzi scheme and make later investors believe huge profits could be had. By the time the Securities Exchange Commission shut down Mantria in 2009, just $790,000 remained from the other $37 million. In addition to the sheer size of the scam, the reach that Wragg and Knorr achieved in a few short years out of college remains hard to fathom. Former President Bill Clinton personally honored their now disgraced work in a ceremony for the Clinton Global Initiative in...

Colorado Treasurer Dave Young says Galindo recall effort ‘raises serious questions’ News | April 7, 2019 Tyler Silvy tsilvy@greeleytribune.com Amid a backdrop of calls for secession and a push for the recall of numerous Democratic state legislators, a House District 50 Democrat voted for a controversial firearms bill, as well as numerous changes to oil and gas regulations. That Democrat wasn’t Rochelle Galindo, the current House District 50 representative who is now the subject of a recall effort. It was former District 50 Rep. Dave Young, who never encountered a recall effort. A Tribune review of Young’s votes from the...

A consortium of oil-producing countries has taken more than a million barrels a day off the market — and that’s the least of the problems plaguing American gasoline prices. Across the U.S., regular gas averaged $2.77 a gallon, up 7 cents on the week and 29 cents on the month, according to GasBuddy. Last year, gas prices topped out at $2.98 at the outset of Memorial Day weekend. Oil prices are climbing, but that only accounts for about one-quarter of the recently higher gas prices American drivers have been facing. A bigger issue is that this is around the time...

Natural gas prices at the Waha hub in West Texas plummeted to record low negative levels on Wednesday, as pipeline constraints and problems at compressor stations at one pipeline stranded gas produced in the most prolific U.S. shale oil basin. Real-time or next-day prices at the Waha hub in Texas have stayed at negative levels since March 22, so drillers have had to pay companies with capacity to ship the gas via pipeline. On Wednesday, the spot Waha hub prices plunged to minus $3.38 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), from minus 2 cents for Tuesday, data from the Intercontinental...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Moscow on Thursday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Israeli leader's office said on Tuesday. The statement did not elaborate on the intended topics of discussion. The two leaders will meet five days before Israel's April 9 election in which the right-wing Netanyahu faces a strong challenge from a centrist candidate. On Monday, Netanyahu told reporters he and Putin spoke by telephone about Syria, whose Russian-backed president, Bashar al-Assad, has been gaining ground in an eight-year civil war.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy is asking President Donald Trump to grant a presidential permit to extend the Alaska Railroad into Canada, supporting a Canadian company seeking to blaze a new path for Asian-bound products. Linking the Alaska and North American rail systems, an idea more than a century old, would cut at least two days travel time for Canadian and Lower 48 cargo headed to the Far East because of shorter sea routes, supporters say. “To me it was a no-brainer,” said Sean McCoshen, chief executive of Alberta to Alaska Railway Development Corp., speaking to the Senate Transportation Committee late...

Palestinian cleric Abu Taqi Al-Din Al-Dari at the Al-Aqsa Mosque said in a video from March 12, 2019 that young people in Germany and France do not value marriage as much as Muslims do. For example, it is said that in 2050, Muslims in France will outnumber the French. “But it is not these numbers that we are counting on to turn France into an Islamic country”, he continued. Rather, he explained, France will become an Islamic country through Jihad, since Muslims must have a country that will bring Islam’s guidance and message to the West. He then gave examples...

If the trade deal with China is not "great," the United States will not accept it, stated President Donald Trump on Friday. He stressed once again that the talks with Beijing are going "very well." (Please see link for full article)

What started as an American phenomenon is now being felt around the world as U.S. oil exports surge to levels unthinkable only a few years ago. The flow of crude will keep growing over the next few years with huge consequences for the oil industry, global politics and even whole economies. OPEC, for example, will face challenges keeping oil prices high, while Washington has a new, and potent, diplomatic weapon. American oil exports stepped up a gear last year, jumping more than 70 percent to just over 2 million barrels a day. Oil traders and shale executives believe U.S. crude...

Gasoline prices in the United States rose in the week ended Monday to a national average of $2.62 per gallon, with some drivers paying the most, in five years for this time of the year. National averages rose a quarter from the previous month, and 2 cents from last year, the AAA motor club said in its weekly report. "On the week, every state except Florida (no change) saw gas prices increase, some as much as 16 cents, with the Great Lakes and Central region seeing the most states with double-digit jumps on the week," the report said. The biggest...

President Trump has promised an economic boom that will last for years to come, but he’s unlikely to get one without the help of Congress to pass major new legislation, according to estimates by Trump’s own economic team. To achieve about 3% growth for the next decade, Trump would need a big infrastructure bill, more tax cuts, additional deregulation, and policies that transition more people off government aid and into full-time jobs, according to the 2019 Economic Report of the President, released Tuesday by Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers. There’s skepticism that Trump will be able to get all of...

Democratic presidential candidate John Hickenlooper confirmed Wednesday night during his CNN town hall event that he took his mother to watch an X-rated pornographic movie when he was younger and that the two stayed for the entire movie. Hickenlooper confirmed that the incident, which he wrote about in his memoir, happened when he returned home from college to visit his mother for Thanksgiving. Hickenlooper's dad died when he was 8-years-old, and he said that he didn't realize that his mother was lonely until he returned home from college. "I promised, I called a friend in Philadelphia — and ... we...

BILLINGS, Mont. — A judge blocked oil and gas drilling across almost 500 square miles in Wyoming and said the U.S. government must consider climate change impacts more broadly as it leases huge swaths of public land for energy exploration. The order marks the latest in a string of court rulings over the past decade - including one last month in Montana - that have faulted the U.S. for inadequate consideration of greenhouse gas emissions when approving oil, gas and coal projects on federal land. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington appeared to go a step further than other...

A supremely rare, multimillion-dollar Koenigsegg CCXR Special Edition originally built for the Qatari royal family was wrecked in Mexico City over the weekend, according to witness accounts and photos posted on social media. Pictures show the 249-mph hypercar at a dead stop on the side of the Paseo de la Reforma, a major avenue that crosses the middle of Mexico's capital, immobilized by heavy front-end damage. Jagged, gaping holes can be seen in the carbon fiber bodywork. One of the rear wheels sits tilted at a grotesque angle. Curious onlookers gather round and stare at the car like a crashed...

Beijing cannot indefinitely continue to accumulate wealth and technology by exploiting America’s open markets. A prompt solution of the U.S.-China trade dispute requires a rebalancing on bilateral trade accounts — drastically lower Chinese sales to the U.S. and sharply increasing Chinese purchases of American goods and services. China’s regulatory changes are a different matter. Financial markets should stop fretting about the U.S.-China trade problem — that’s a peripheral issue and a purely trading event. Only the Fed can crash Wall Street. (Please see full article at the link)

E15 fuel has been certified for sale in the United States and is slowly beginning to show up at filling stations. Here's a quick rundown of what you need to know about this new fuel option. What is E15 and why should I care? E15 is shorthand for gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol. The reason it's a big deal is that ethanol is fairly corrosive to rubber and certain metals, so it can cause damage to vital components. Ethanol also attracts and bonds with water from the air, and that water can separate out inside the tank due to...

Southeastern New Mexico is riding a monster wave of oil production, with output flooding into a record of nearly 246 million barrels in 2018, according to the latest statistics from the state Oil Conservation Division. That’s up 42 percent over 2017, when New Mexico produced nearly 173 million barrels, also a record high at that time. And it’s nearly three times the 86 million barrels produced in 2012, when the modern technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling unleashed a years-long gusher from previously untapped shale oil reserves in the Permian Basin in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. Natural...

In 1982, operatives from the USSR’s Committee for State Security– known internationally as the KGB– celebrated the procurement of a very elusive bit of Western technology. The Soviets were developing a highly lucrative pipeline to carry natural gas across the expanse of Siberia, but they lacked the software to manage the complex array of pumps, valves, turbines, and storage facilities that the system would require. The United States possessed such software, but the US government had predictably turned down their Cold War opponent’s request to purchase the product. Never ones to allow the limitations of the law to dictate their...

WASHINGTON - Intelligence shortcomings, as we see, have a thousand fathers; secret intelligence triumphs are orphans. Here is the unremarked story of "the Farewell dossier": how a CIA campaign of computer sabotage resulting in a huge explosion in Siberia -- all engineered by a mild-mannered economist named Gus Weiss -- helped us win the Cold War. Weiss worked down the hall from me in the Nixon administration. In early 1974, he wrote a report on Soviet advances in technology through purchasing and copying that led the beleaguered president -- detente notwithstanding -- to place restrictions on the export of computers...