HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? How America Is Taking the Wind Out of Saudi Aramco’s IPO.

Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, is going public next year. The company’s spokespeople believe this public offering will be record breaking, and expect the five percent of the company expected to be on offer will be sold at a price high enough to value the firm at $2 trillion. If that’s true (a big if, according to most outside observers), it would make Saudi Aramco the most valuable publicly traded company on the planet. Unfortunately for Riyadh, weak oil prices aren’t the only thing working against this landmark IPO. As the WSJ reports, a boom in the U.S. petrochemicals industry—one of the offshoots of the shale boom—is blunting Saudi Aramco’s efforts to move down the oil supply chain. . . .

Fracking’s effect on American oil and gas production is common knowledge at this point, but some of its impact on the petrochemical industry remains underreported. Oil and gas drilling also produces liquid hydrocarbons that can be used as feedstock for companies like Dow Chemical, and the shale revolution has kicked off a mini-boom in that industry, with $185 billion in new projects currently in the works.

That’s been a big boon for American manufacturing, but increasingly it’s looking to shake up the global petrochemicals market. According to IHS Markit (h/t the WSJ), net U.S. petrochemical exports are expected to grow by an order of magnitude over the next ten years.

The noose tightens.

HUH: US detects ‘highly unusual’ North Korean submarine activity.

The US military has detected “highly unusual and unprecedented levels” of North Korean submarine activity and evidence of an “ejection test” in the days following Pyongyang’s second intercontinental ballistic missile launch this month, a defense official told CNN on Monday.

An ejection test examines a missile’s “cold-launch system,” which uses high pressure steam to propel a missile out of the launch canister into the air before its engines ignite. That helps prevent flames and heat from the engine from damaging either the submarine, submersible barge or any nearby equipment used to launch the missile.

Carried out on land at Sinpo Naval Shipyard, Sunday’s ejection test is the third time this month — and fourth this year — that North Korea has conducted a trial of the missile component that is critical to developing submarine launch capabilities, according to the US defense official.

That’s disconcerting.

NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON: Though perhaps it is, as well as corruption. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz faces more questions about her IT techs.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is coming under mounting pressure to explain why she kept an IT aide on the payroll for months after a criminal investigation was revealed, facing calls from Republicans to testify as well as a newly filed ethics complaint.

Wasserman Schultz, the Florida congresswoman who led the Democratic National Committee until last year, terminated Imran Awan’s “part-time” employment last week, when he was arrested at Dulles International Airport trying to fly to Pakistan. He was charged with a bank fraud count.

But he and other former IT aides for House Democrats have been on investigators’ radar screen for months over concerns about possible double-billing, alleged equipment theft and access to sensitive computer systems. Most lawmakers fired Awan in March, but Schultz kept him on, though he was barred from the House IT network.

She should face a special prosecutor.

NO. WAY. Australia Weather Bureau Caught Tampering With Climate Numbers.

Meteorologist Lance Pidgeon watched the 13 degrees Fahrenheit Goulburn recording from July 2 disappear from the bureau’s website. The temperature readings fluctuated briefly and then disappeared from the government’s website.

“The temperature dropped to minus 10 (13 degrees Fahrenheit), stayed there for some time and then it changed to minus 10.4 (14 degrees Fahrenheit) and then it disappeared,” Pidgeon said, adding that he notified scientist Jennifer Marohasy about the problem, who then brought the readings to the attention of the bureau.

The bureau would later restore the original 13 degrees Fahrenheit reading after a brief question and answer session with Marohasy.

“The bureau’s quality ­control system, designed to filter out spurious low or high values was set at minus 10 minimum for Goulburn which is why the record automatically adjusted,” a bureau spokeswoman told reporters Monday. BOM added that there are limits placed on how low temperatures could go in some very cold areas of the country.

Now why would that be?

PLEASE STAY, NANCY! Nancy Pelosi Dismisses ‘Unimportant’ Questions About Her Future Leadership in the Democratic Party. At least until 2021.

AT AMAZON, fresh New Releases, updated hourly.

Plus, today’s new Kindle Daily Deals.

And shop the Digital Deals of the Day.

IRAN SAYS NEW U.S. SANCTIONS BREACH OBAMA’S NUCLEAR DEAL: Well, of course Iran says they do. But so what. Perhaps the ayatollahs should tell their Revolutionary Guards to quit playing speedboat bluff with the U.S. Navy. Besides, Obama’s deal was a very very bad deal.

MULTICULTI: Celebrating Norwegian Christianity – With a Muslim Imam.

IRAN-NORTH KOREA CONNECTION?:

A top North Korean politician recently left Pyongyang for a 10-day trip to Iran, a country that may still be cooperating militarily with the Kim Jong Un regime.

Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported Tuesday chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Assembly of North Korea Kim Yong Nam left Pyongyang on Monday to attend the inauguration ceremony for President Hassan Rouhani.

The North Korean newspaper stated the inauguration ceremony is scheduled for Aug. 5, but Kurdish media network Rudaw reported the inauguration of Rouhani is to take place in two stages on Aug. 4 and 6.

While in Iran, Kim Yong Nam will discuss Iran will “issues of joint concern” with the ayatollah regime.

Issues like these, I suppose.

MY COLLEAGUE BEN BARTON’S BOOK, Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future of Law, gets a very nice review in the New York Times. “In the legal domain, the problem is presented as the availability of lawyers, rather than the availability of justice. And, as Mr. Barton and Mr. Bibas convincingly demonstrate after surveying the research, in many contexts the presence of more lawyers actually reduces the speed and effectiveness of achieving justice.”

HUH: Drug prosecutions at historic low under Sessions’ “crackdown.”

At a time when President Trump has publically called Sessions “very weak,” legal experts and former prosecutors say the Senate’s inaction confirming new U.S. attorneys and a federal hiring freeze instituted by the Trump administration have left the attorney general without the tools he needs to reverse a five-year decline in drug prosecutions. Without his own people implementing tough-on-crime policies on the ground, local investigators may still be operating under Obama-era reforms and bringing less cases to the feds for prosecution.

“For four years people got used to doing things a different way,” said Mark Osler, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit. “Sessions doesn’t have the people on the ground to do the shoving.”

As the country’s highest ranking law enforcement officer, Sessions has vowed to punish drug offenders with the harshest possible sentences, a drastic shift from drug policy under President Obama. In a memo to U.S. Attorneys in May, he reversed an an Obama-era reform, urging prosecutors to enhance sentences for those who violate federal drug laws.

But so far Sessions’ changes have not registered in drug prosecution data.

Maybe he is weak after all.

SHE’S NOT JUST ENHANCED, SHE’S UNRECOGNIZABLE: Flashback: Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Vogue Photos Spark Controversy. New theory: She was preparing disinformation to facilitate her escape to Pakistan.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF MISOGYNY AND SEXUAL EXPLOITATION? NBC Lawsuit: The Network’s Desire for ‘Attractive Employees’ Created a ‘Toxic Environment.’

A former NBC employee claims the network blatantly looked for “good-looking employees” and asked that she submit photos before being allowed to interview.

Stephanie Belanger has filed a lawsuit against the network, claiming that NBC’s focus on beauty enabled a toxic, discriminatory environment, the New York Post reported Monday.

In the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Belanger alleges disability discrimination, sexual harassment, and termination after she complained.

I think the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice should investigate NBC and get to the bottom of these shocking allegations.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES: Pentagon Should Declassify Report on Afghan Military Sex Abuse.

The U.S. government’s Afghanistan watchdog has asked the Pentagon to declassify a report about alleged sexual abuse of children by members of the Afghan security forces.
…
“At the request of a bipartisan, bicameral group of 93 members of Congress, SIGAR this quarter issued a report to Congress on DOD and State’s implementation of the Leahy Laws in Afghanistan,” says SIGAR’s quarterly report. “Because DOD has classified much of the information on which the SIGAR report is based, the report is classified. SIGAR has requested that DOD declassify the report so that it can be released to the public.”

A Defense Department official said the report is undergoing a security review and the information may be declassified. The official could not say why the information was classified in the first place.

At a guess, because going public raises issues about our mission in Afghanistan which few people are comfortable talking about.

KURT SCHLICHTER: The Military Coup Against Donald Trump of 2018, Part 2.

Here’s Part One.

And you might want to download my paper on military coups in America, while you still can.

NOTE: “PROSTITUTION” IS NOT THE SAME AS “HUMAN TRAFFICKING.”

CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: OPEC Has a Crippling Problem: Its Members Can’t Stop Pumping.

Eight months after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries announced a plan for its 14 members and 10 allied countries to withhold almost 2% of the world’s oil every day to boost prices, seven of the 11 OPEC members that pledged to cut appear to be producing more oil than promised.

Crude prices have actually fallen, by 7.6% to $52.52 a barrel, since the beginning of the year—half what the cartel called a fair price just three years ago and a level that some say is here for the long term.

Previously, low production costs meant OPEC members profited even when oil prices fell. These days, members have ramped up government spending to keep populations happy and cover military expenses, and don’t have a cushion to let oil revenues slip. Their strained budgets can be covered only through increasingly high prices per barrel, and if prices are low they need to produce more.

The inability to control output poses a potentially existential threat to OPEC’s influence.

OPEC’s existential crisis is due almost entirely to frackers — have you hugged one today? — which means that after almost 50 years, we are indeed drilling our way out of that problem.

17 MONTHS TOO LATE: Mizzou cuts ties with admin who accosted student journalists.

Basler, notably, was filmed screaming at student photographer Tim Tai during the protests, even blocking him from photographing the uprising.

Although the reason for Basler’s departure is not certain, some have speculated that she was fired due to her involvement in the protests, while others have suggested that it was a result of several recent budget cuts that appear to be related to fallout from the protests.

The Daily Caller, for instance, reported that school officials had “finally rid themselves” of Basler, pointing out that her “firing” came roughly 17 months after the school dismissed Melissa Click for physically accosting a different student journalist while calling for “muscle” to evict them from the premises.

ABC 17, meanwhile, implied that her departure was a result of massive budget cuts imposed by Mizzou in an effort to make up for a significant drop in enrollment, noting that it had previously reported on plans to shave more than $1 million from the Division of Student Affairs’ budget.

Mizzou isn’t even close to turning around its self-imposed downward spiral.

FAKE-NEWS FALLOUT: Katie Couric Out at Yahoo News: Couric’s tenure marred by criticism over deceptive editing.

KELLY’S UP, KATIE’S OUT, AND DEEP THROAT’S BACK (NOT REALLY): All that and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

TITLE IX BLUES: Kicker Matt Boermeester was removed from USC after an unfair investigation, girlfriend says.

Zoe Katz, 22, a senior, said in a two-page statement her attorney emailed to The Times that Boermeester “has been falsely accused of conduct involving me.” Katz confirmed that the statement was hers. Her attorney, Kerry L. Steigerwalt, said that USC alleged that Boermeester shoved Katz outside her home.

USC suspended Boermeester in February while the school investigated what it called a “student-conduct issue.”

Mark Schamel, an attorney representing Boermeester, said Boermeester was not permitted to return to USC following the school’s investigation, in which USC alleged that Boermeester assaulted Katz. Katz has denied this, as did Boermeester, through his attorney.

In the statement, Katz said she and Boermeester have dated for more than a year. The Title IX investigation began, Steigerwalt said, after a neighbor witnessed Boermeester and Katz roughhousing. The neighbor told his roommate, who told a coach in USC’s athletic department that Boermeester was abusing Katz. The coach then reported the incident to the Title IX office.

Katz said she was summoned to a mandatory meeting with Title IX officials, where she told investigators that the two were playing around. Katz was subsequently told that she “must be afraid of Matt,” she said. She told officials she was not. Boermeester has not been arrested or charged with a crime.

Clearly, Katz is not yet woke enough to understand that she’d been abused, and like other college women must be treated as a virtual ward of the state.

I THINK HE SHOULD GET THE NEXT OPEN SUPREME COURT SEAT: Don Willett’s Lone Star Legal Show: The Texas Supreme Court justice is witty and approachable, and he’s huge on Twitter. He’s also one of the most influential conservative jurists in the country right now.

In the past few decades, the number of American jobs requiring a state license has exploded. Roughly one out of every four workers must seek a license to work. Now some institutions are starting to push back. Perhaps the most prominent — or at least most fervent — of these is the Texas Supreme Court. In 2015, the court struck down the state’s licensing requirement for eyebrow threaders (cosmetologists who remove unwanted facial hair using a thread), finding it unreasonable.

One of the justices, Don Willett, who has served on the court since 2005, went much further. The state’s regulatory requirements were not just extreme, he concluded, but “preposterous.” To pursue the low-paying job, prospective eyebrow threaders had to pay thousands of dollars in fees and were required to complete more than five times as many hours of initial training as emergency medical technicians. “If these rules are not arbitrary,” Willett wrote in a concurring opinion, “then the definition of ‘arbitrary’ is itself arbitrary.”

Willett’s concurrence in the case, Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, has been hailed as one of the most important conservative opinions of recent years. It was expansive enough to trigger talk about reviving a judicial approach to regulation that has lain dormant for decades. It’s one of the main reasons Willett’s name appeared on President Trump’s short list for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Willett is pretty blunt about his overall intent. He’s a champion of individual rights, claiming a central role for the judiciary in protecting those rights against state encroachment. “Liberty is not provided by government,” he wrote in Patel. “Liberty pre-exists government.” In that context, Willett wasn’t talking about speech or privacy rights. He was referring to economic liberty: the right to earn a living by unfettered free choice in a capitalist economy.

For someone in the important but relatively obscure position of state supreme court justice, the 51-year-old Willett has engendered an unlikely cult of personality. He’s hailed by conservative columnists and think tanks and has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal as one of the right’s leading legal thinkers. It’s hard to find anyone, even among his liberal critics, who won’t acknowledge Willett’s combination of legal acumen and down-home style.

Read the whole thing.

OH: “Overwhelming” Support For More Background Checks Not So Overwhelming After All.

How often have you heard gun control advocates quoting figures which indicate that “more than 90%” of gun owners, NRA members, hunters or whoever else support “universal background checks” in the past couple of years? If you follow this subject even casually your answer was most likely pretty often. It’s been repeated enough that we generally see it accepted as part of the conventional wisdom. But as is so often the case these day, the “conventional wisdom” is frequently neither. The NRA Institute for Legislative Action has dug into some of the actual numbers on this question and more, finding that how a question is phrased to the public can have a significant impact on the data.

Read the whole thing — which is much more than most people reporting the “numbers” have done.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: GOP Rep. Introduces Legislation to Nullify State-Level Gun Controls.