Thursday, August 22, 2019
US Sets Combined Oil and Gas Production Records as China Demand Soars
The U.S. energy production was evenly balanced in 2018 with petroleum liquids accounting for 28.7 quadrillion British Thermal Units (Btu) and U.S. dry natural gas production averaging 28.5 billion cubic feet per day. Liquids’ production both hit records with 11 million barrels of oil per day (b/d) and 5 million b/d of condensate gas.
The United States surpassed Saudi Arabia in 2018 as the world’s largest petroleum producer for the first time since 1973, and extended its decade-long lead over Russia as the world’s largest natural gas producer.
Global energy demand grew by +2.9 percent last year with China consumption accounting for 34 percent of growth, followed by +20 percent from the United States and +15 percent from India. China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest crude oil importer with 8.4 million b/d in 2017. Imports currently exceed 10 million b/d and are still rising.
China’s domestic oil production peaked at 4.4 million b/d in June 2015, but over-working in its main drilling fields is blamed for production falling to...
Sweden: Bombings and Explosions Up 45 Percent in 2019
Statistics released by the police show that Sweden saw a total of 83 explosive incidents during the period from January to July, a number that has increased to 120 this year, Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reports.
Last year saw a total of 157 explosions across the country according to Dagens Nyheter, but actual numbers are somewhat unclear, with other groups such as the Crime Prevention Council BRÅ reporting 108 claims of general destruction by an explosion in 2018.
The National Forensic Center (NFC), which also investigates explosive incidents, sets the number of cases in 2018 at 255 and 196 so far this year. NFC statistics show a steady increase in cases year-on-year with only 93 cases occurring in 2013.
Criminologist Sven Granath commented on the explosions saying, “Yes, unfortunately, it has increased. Why we do not know, this may be due to the increase in gun violence at the national level. In individual locations, there may be one or more conflicts between...
Trump signs order to wipe out student loan debt for disabled veterans
President Trump canceled federal student loan debts Wednesday for tens of thousands of veterans who are 100% disabled, saying it’s the nation who owes them instead for their service.
At the 75th annual American Veterans convention in Louisville, Kentucky, the president signed an executive action directing the Education Department to eliminate “every penny” of student loan debt for about 25,000 disabled veterans, who owe an average of $30,000.
The president said the action is worthy of veterans “who have made immense sacrifices, the ultimate sacrifice in many ways, for our nation.”
“That’s hundreds of millions of dollars in student debt held by our severely wounded warriors — it’s gone forever,” the president said.
Mr. Trump called to the stage retired Sgt. Katherine Cassell, who developed severe lung problems and other ailments after serving two tours in Iraq with the Army, Navy and Air Force. She is now working toward a degree at the University of Nevada.
“This is an amazing relief on my family, as well as — I know — many thousands of veterans,” she told the president.
Mr. Trump said of his action, “Veterans like Katherine, who have made such enormous sacrifices for our country, should not be asked to pay any more. Rather it is America who owes our heroes a supreme debt of gratitude.”
Bipartisan legislation was introduced in June in Congress that would dismiss all federal student loan debt for eligible veterans, regardless of whether they applied for related programs at the Education and Veterans Affairs departments.
The president also addressed the suicide crisis among veterans. He touted a new...
Tucker Carlson RIPS Senator Mike Lee for Capitulating to Google, Big Tech
Tucker has returned to Fox News, and he is taking no prisoners.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson hammered Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) on an Tuesday for becoming one of the Senate’s most groveling shills for Big Tech after at one time opposing the Silicon Valley corporations that actively discriminate against the free speech of conservatives.
“Lee has questioned whether Congress should even bother with antitrust investigations of tech companies. Lee has introduced legislation that would make it harder for the government to block corporate mergers. Lee has complained about the E.U. imposing fines on Google for its behavior,” Carlson said on his eponymous TV program.
He connected the dots, showing that Lee has grown to be a Google apologist as the tech giant has opened up their pocketbooks toward Lee and ramped up their business in his home state of Utah.
“Starting in 2013, Google spent millions of dollars rolling out its high-speed Internet service, Google Fiber, in both Provo and Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2015, Google hosted a high-profile fundraiser for Lee at its Silicon Valley law firm. The fundraiser got a lot of attention, so Google backed out. But the fundraiser itself went ahead, and Lee received a sizable donation from Google’s political action committee,” Carlson noted.
“Ever since that fundraiser and the money he took, Lee’s interest in having the FTC investigate tech companies seems to have completely evaporated,” Carlson added.
He explained that Google hired Lee’s former senior counsel from the Senate Judiciary Committee and curried favor with neoliberal Washington D.C. think-tanks, the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. This also helped curry Lee’s favor, as Google plays the conservative movement like a fiddle.
The careful message crafting that resulted from Google’s successful lobbying effort has become the doctrinaire line across much of the conservative movement. This is another example of the corrosive libertarianism that plagues GOP politics, according to Carlson.
“The message they pushed was that Google and other tech monopolies are really something conservatives ought to celebrate. These companies are triumphs of the free market. We should be grateful for them. And worrying about their...
Wikipedia Has ICE Facilities Listed Under ‘Concentration And Internment Camps’ Section
Wikipedia Goes Fake News.
Likely will not be edited or removed any time soon
Wikipedia, the online Encyclopedia, which has been routinely accused of left wing bias, has a list of ICE facilities under a section titled “concentration and internment camps,” and is keeping it there despite critics requesting it be removed.
The list of ICE facilities reappeared on the concentration camps page after Democrats, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, used the rhetoric to describe US holding centers on the border with Mexico.
Editors of the Wikipedia page cited the Democrats’ use of the term “concentration camp” to justify the inclusion of the ICE centers on the page.
A discussion regarding the inclusion of the centers has been closed, with the list of facilities remaining on the page.
Wikipedia policy states that another discussion with have to be opened before the matter can be reviewed again.
The way Wikipedia functions means that even unregistered users are able to add sections to pages, which can then be edited and added to by other users.
After the ICE facilities were initially added to the concentration camp page last year, media coverage by leftist entities such as Vice and Gizmodo acted as if the entries were proof that the ICE facilities are indeed internment camps.
Gizmodo called the action “a surprisingly unbiased entry that’s clearly presenting information without taking sides.”
Vice said that the ICE facilities had been listed next to “other sites of atrocity throughout...
Solomon on Spygate: If Trump declassifies these 10 documents, the Democrats are finished
“The documents to be declassified also include 12 FBI reports on interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all other applications to surveil Carter Page,” Fox News and other outlets reported.
But it didn’t happen. For some reason, the president was talked into delaying the declassification process.
Then again in May, POTUS instructed the federal law enforcement and intelligence community to turn over all documents requested by Attorney General William Barr for declassification as they relate to “Spygate.”
We haven’t heard anything since. Meanwhile, the hostile establishment media and Democrats have sort of moved on from Spygate and the Mueller probe, settling on new strategies aimed at driving down the president’s polling numbers and, eventually, from office.
They are shifting their anti-Trump narrative back to “racist”, “white supremacist”, “xenophobe,” as the mainstream media screech “recession!” But it could be that the administration is getting ready to play some ‘trump cards’ (sorry).
Investigative reporter John Solomon of The Hill, who has been an extremely reliable source in terms of revealing new information related to Spygate, notes that should the president decide to release 10 documents and document chains, Democrats would be in heap big trouble.
And given Solomon’s timing — writing about this now — he may be tipping us off to what’s coming.
Via The Hill here’s what Solomon believes may be coming:
How a 6th-grade history project exonerated the captain who was blamed for one of the Navy's worst WWII disasters
- At the end of World War II, the USS Indianapolis sailed into one of the Navy's worst disasters of the war, losing more than two-thirds of its crew after being sunk in the Pacific.
- The cruiser's captain, Charles B. McVay III, was blamed for the loss for decades, until a grade-school project set the record straight for good.
Of the ship's 1195 crew members, only 316 survived the sinking and the subsequent time adrift at sea in the middle of nowhere. Among the survivors was the captain of the Indianapolis, Charles B. McVay III.
McVay would be charged with negligence in the loss of the ship. Even though he was restored to active duty after his court-martial and retired a rear admiral, the guilt of the loss haunted him for the rest of his life. He committed suicide with his Navy revolver on his own front lawn with a toy sailor in his hand.
McVay did everything he could in the wake of the torpedoing of the Indianapolis. He sounded the alarm, giving the order to abandon ship and was one of the last men off. Many of the survivors of the sinking publicly stated he was not to blame for its loss. But this wasn't enough for the family members of the ship's crew, who hounded McVay year after year, blaming him for the loss of their sons.
The Navy was partly to blame. They didn't warn Indianapolis that the submarine I-58 was operating along the area of the ship's course to Okinawa. They also didn't warn the ship to zigzag in its pattern to evade enemy submarines. When the Indianapolis radioed a distress signal, it was picked up by three Navy stations, who ignored the call because one was drunk, the other had a commander who didn't want to be disturbed, and the last thought it was a trap.
Three and a half days later, the survivors were rescued from the open water, suffering from salt water poisoning, exposure, hypothermia, and the largest case of shark attacks ever recorded. It was truly a horrifying scene. The horror is what led to McVay's court martial, one of very few commanders to face such a trial concerning the loss of a ship.
Even though the Japanese commander of I-58, the man who actually destroyed the Indianapolis, told the US Navy that standard Navy evasion techniques would not have worked — Indianapolis was doomed from the get-go. Even that didn't satisfy McVay's critics.
It wasn't until sixth-grader Hunter Scott began a history project in school about the sinking of the Indianapolis.
He poured through official Navy documents until he found the evidence he needed to conclusively prove that McVay wasn't responsible for the loss of his ship. His project caught the attention of then-Congressman Joe Scarborough and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who helped pass a Congressional resolution exonerating McVay. It was signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000.
Hunter Scott, the onetime sixth-grader and eternal friend to the crew of the Indianapolis, is now a naval aviator. He attended the University of North Carolina on a Navy ROTC scholarship and joined active duty in...
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