CHANGE: A Mexican Oil Renaissance Could Thaw US Relations.

America’s southern neighbor seemed on the verge of turning a corner three years ago when its then newly-elected president Enrique Peña Nieto began rolling through some much needed reforms for the country, starting with an overhaul of the energy sector. Mexico’s problem was its state-owned oil company, Pemex, which had owned and presided over the country’s oil resources for three-quarters of a century. Inefficiencies grew, as they often do in these state-owned enterprises, so there was plenty of excitement both within and outside of Mexico when Peña Nieto began his privatization push.

Unfortunately, things didn’t start out smoothly. Initial lease auctions produced meager to middling results, and Mexico’s reform-minded president started to feel the pressure of denationalizing the country’s oil reserves—resources with deep cultural significance—without much to show for it. This summer, Mexico’s energy prospects brightened considerably after an international consortium of private companies hit it big with a “world-class” find in a shallow water region in the Gulf of Mexico that they had won the right to explore through a government auction. Premier Oil, Talos Energy, and Sierra Oil & Gas estimate that the Zama field they discovered may contain between 1.4 billion and 2 billion barrels of oil. There were two other encouraging signs for the fledgling privatization movement in Mexico on that very same day: Mexico auctioned off 21 of the 24 offshore oil blocks on offer, while the Italian firm Eni upped its estimates of a March discovery to more than 1 billion barrels. . . .

President Trump has strained the Mexican-American relationship, to put it mildly, but growth in the newly-privatized Mexican oil industry could help bandage those wounds. Plenty of American producers already have experience drilling for crude in the Gulf of Mexico, and can bring that expertise to bear in underutilized offshore Mexican formations. Mexico has shale hydrocarbons, too, so there’s potential for U.S. frackers down south as well. There’s a path forward here that could help everyone in North America win.

Well, good.

POWER, UNLIMITED POWER: Zinc-Air Batteries Research Could be a Game-Changer for Consumer Tech.

Zinc-air batteries are powered by a mix of zinc metal and oxygen. Zinc is an incredibly cheap and abundant metal, and oxygen is everywhere. The design allows these batteries to store up to five times more energy than lithium-ion batteries, and, notably, zinc is less harmful on the environment: Because zinc is low in toxicity, there’s not as severe of an impact on the environment when the batteries are trashed or recycled, and little concern that the degradation of those batteries could harm surrounding ecosystems. No special steps are needed (assuming its a mercury-free design) to throw them away. All of this is to say that on paper, zinc-air batteries ought to be wildly popular.

The major obstacle, however, is that zinc-air batteries are difficult to recharge. The discharge and charge process requires “bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts” to facilitate the reduction and generation of oxygen. In the case of zinc-air batteries, electrocatalysts have proved too expensive for all but a few limited uses, like some hearing aids.

With that problem in mind, a new, cheaper method for creating battery electrocatalysts could be a game-changer. Here’s how they did it: Researchers create catalysts with a three-step process, involving the simultaneous control of a metal oxide’s composition, size, and crystallinity.
Through this approach, an electrocatalyst can be comprised of much more common metals like iron, cobalt, and nickel.

A longer-lasting battery that’s also cheaper to replace would be nice for phones, but could be a game-changer for electric cars.

RIP, DICK GREGORY: “The conspiracy theory is The New York Times and The Washington Post and NBC and CBS. And just thank God that all these radio stations like yours….”

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WHY DOESN’T CONGRESS JUST REPEAL IT? 6th Circuit Rejects Rand Paul’s Constitutional Challenge To FATCA On Standing Grounds.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Normal Americans Are Bored By The Fake Drama. “I took a week off from the milieu of political insanity to go out amongst the normals and chalk up another huge trial victory, and when I got back I was stunned – stunned! – to find that a consensus had formed that Nazis are bad. Beforehand, I had no idea where the establishment stood on Nazis, but now it’s crystal clear. They hate Nazis because Nazis are bad. Everyone from CNN to Mitt Romney hates Nazis. I couldn’t be prouder of an establishment that takes that kind of tough stand. They’re going to hate Nazis, and they don’t care whose jack-booted toes they step on!”

I’m not actually sure that I believe Mitt Romney when he says he hates Nazis. After all, the press was telling me that he was Hitler just a few years ago, and would Hitler hate Nazis? I don’t think so.

SELF-DRAINING SWAMP: Congressman ‘Seeing So Many People Bail from NOAA and EPA’ Over Climate ‘Fear.’

HISTORIC BOMBER FORMATION: A B-17, B-29 and B-52 fly in formation.

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT: University of Texas Removes Four Confederate Statues Overnight.

University of Texas President Greg Fenves ordered the immediate removal of statues of Robert E. Lee and other prominent Confederate figures from a main area of campus, saying such monuments have become “symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.”

Fenves announced the move late Sunday night as crews were in place to begin taking the statues down. The school also blocked off the area during the process, and the statues are expected to be gone by mid-morning Monday, a spokesman said.

The university moved a statue of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis from its perch near the campus clock tower to a history museum in 2015. Fenves now says statues of Lee, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston and Confederate Postmaster General John H. Reagan, which were in the same area as Davis, also will be moved to the Brisco Center for American History on campus.

Maybe we could erect generic statues of fake people of various ethno-gender groups, like the nonexistent European-style monuments which adorn euro bills.

A VETERAN OF THE OTHER FOREIGN LEGION, THE SPANISH FOREIGN LEGION: Moment colleagues burst into applause to congratulate policeman who gunned down five jihadis while working overtime as it emerges he is a former elite soldier.

HMM: Did China Hack the Seventh Fleet?

WHAT COMES AFTER “NAZI?” “The Trump-is-a-Nazi thing isn’t likely to be as long-lived as the Trump-is-a-Russian-stooge thing was, or the Trump-hates-women thing, or the Trump-hates-Mexicans thing. It’s just too hard a sell: his son-in-law is a Jew, after all. And then what?… Stay tuned. This should be good.”

RICHARD HASS: The End of Asia’s Strategic Miracle?

Despite all of these tensions, Asia has remained largely at peace, partly because no country has wanted to jeopardize economic growth by initiating a conflict. This perspective is most clearly associated with Deng Xiaoping. In leading China’s process of economic “reform and opening-up” from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, Deng explicitly emphasized the importance of a stable external environment to facilitate internal economic development. The reliance on regional trade ties to support growth and employment has provided yet another incentive to sustain peace.

But economics was probably not the only factor at play. Because most Asian countries are host to relatively homogenous societies with strong national identities, the chance of civil conflicts erupting and spilling over national borders is relatively low. Last but certainly not least, America’s strong military presence in Asia – which underpins its robust regional alliance system – has reduced the need for Asian countries to develop large military programs of their own, and has reinforced a status quo that discourages armed adventurism.

These factors have contributed to peace and stability in Asia, but they cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, they are now coming under increasing pressure – putting the strategic miracle that has facilitated Asia’s economic miracle in jeopardy.

How much of an economic liability does North Korea have to become before Beijing acts, or has President Xi Jinping turned his back on Xiaoping’s growth-first policy?

TRUMP’S TRANSITION TO POPULIST TRUSTBUSTER CONTINUES: Corporate America’s exodus from Trump may have just begun.

RUBEN NAVARRETTE: Trump and the media love mud wrestling:

In keeping with the recent meme of recognizing bad behavior “on many sides,” there was something that was painfully obvious during last week’s improv news-conference-like-no-other in the lobby of Trump Tower: President Trump and the media deserve each other. Both are driven by ego and take criticism personally. Both will twist the facts to defend themselves and push their agenda. And both love to wrestle in the mud.

Americans are fed precooked narratives by the Fourth Estate. We’re told what’s important and what isn’t, what to focus on and what to ignore, and — above all — what to think.

Last week’s serving was that Trump is providing aid and comfort to a loathsome bunch of misfits — neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists.

Nevertheless, for my money, the more important takeaway from that no-holds-barred presser was that we have entered scary and uncharted territory in the relationship between the president and the media. It’s very personal. . . .

All I could think was: The media have lost their collective mind. They used to be content to just tell us what to think. Now, in the era of Trump, they go further and tell us not to trust what we see with our own eyes or hear with our own ears.

Trump does a superb job of getting in his own way, and turning every policy disagreement into a junior high school fistfight.

Still, the last few days have been excruciating for me. Not because I have any affection for Trump or neo-Nazis or white supremacists. I don’t. The country would be better off without the lot of them. However, I have become quite fond of journalism.

I sure miss it.

Don’t we all.

EVERYTHING AND MORE: That’s what you’ll find today in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

DOUG ROSS: 15 Antifa Photos You’ll Never See in Legacy Media.

Not to mention this bit of historic irony:

Modern day Democrats get very angry and confused when reminded that the KKK was their spawn.

IN PLENTY OF TIME FOR YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING: A Quadcopter with sniper rifle or grenade launcher.

YEAH, I’M PRETTY SURE HE DOESN’T CARE WHAT THEY THINK: Mattis Criticized by Media for Telling Navy Sailors ‘You’re Not Some P***y.’

UK JUDENFREI: One in three British Jews consider leaving the UK fearing hate crime, poll finds.

And almost four in 10 say they hide their faith for fear of antisemitic attacks, a poll found.

The survey by YouGov shows that only 59 per cent of Britain’s 270,000 Jewish people feel welcome in the UK.

And three quarters believe the Labour Party harbours antisemites.

Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader two years ago he has had to fend off claims he is not doing enough to tackle discrimination.

Tom Wolfe’s “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe,” seems appropriate here, but lately we’ve been having our own troubles.

WHILE THE LEFT IS TEARING DOWN STATUES AND SCREAMING ABOUT TRUMP, REMINDER: Six police officers shot in three US cities Friday night; two dead.

SOMEONE’S ACTUALLY FIGURED IT OUT: Josh Kraushaar: Trump Exploits Gap Between Elite and Public Opinion: The president’s job approval has inched upwards since Charlottesville, and a surprisingly high number of voters agree with his provocative rhetoric.

The reaction after President Trump’s tepid response to the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville was swift and severe. One broadcast network devoted its entire nightly newscast to Trump’s chaotic press conference on Tuesday. The next day, The Economist portrayed the president screaming into a bullhorn shaped as a Ku Klux Klan hood on its cover—with other news magazines following suit. Many Republican officials have denounced the president in the sharpest terms since his election. Business leaders resigned from the president’s corporate councils in protest.

But in a repeat of myriad Trump campaign controversies, voters didn’t share the same level of outrage as the elites. The latest wave of polling shows that the president’s overall job-approval rating has inched upwards since the controversy, that a sizable majority of Americans support maintaining Confederate memorials instead of tearing them down, and that a notable minority agree with the president’s use of “both sides” language during Tuesday’s press conference.

The polling is simply the latest illustration of the gaping divide between elite opinion and the views of average Americans. It’s clear many voters don’t share the same sense of alarm about Trump as political leaders and journalists. Judging by the news coverage, you’d reasonably expect the president to have alienated the entire country with his insensitive, racially charged rhetoric. In reality, public opinion is splitting along predictable partisan lines—with Trump’s view that Confederate monuments should be preserved getting a surprising degree of bipartisan support.

Former Democratic Rep. Steve Israel put it best, writing in Newsday this week about a recent conversation he overheard at a Long Island diner. “Now they’re making a big deal about statues? Who cares about statues!” Israel recounted hearing. It’s why top Democratic strategists have urged their candidates not to talk to voters about impeachment or dwell on the hot-button issues driving media coverage.

The most surprising finding from the latest polling is how many Americans agree with Trump on the issue of Confederate statues.

Trump benefits from the elite Mass Hysteria Bubble. That’s why he keeps pumping air into it.

SARAH HOYT: Remembering the Past.

Portugal was Roman, we studied the Romans. And we studied them as “our people.”

I can’t say we ever studied the Moorish invaders as our people. Mostly the Moors got accorded the respect of the THINGS they introduced to the peninsula. Almonds, pillows (almofadas) and other things starting with al.

We did study the crusaders who freed the peninsula as our people, among them the Earl Afonso who claimed the territory, and whose son became the first Portuguese king.

Reading about these people, usually in the biographies of more important people from other countries is eye opening. They too weren’t exactly as portrayed to us.

Weirdly, the Spanish kings that took over Portugal (legally by inheritance) and ruled it for six years we were taught to revile. I remember sitting in fourth grade while the teacher solemnly instructed us to deface the pictures of the Phillips in our school book.

But other than that, perhaps because we were taught so many successive waves who then became “our people” we were taught to accept history. History is what it is. You can’t change it by shouting it at it. You certainly can’t change it by toppling statues and renaming streets.

Compared to Europe, American history has barely started — and yet already there are those who would try to erase it.

Anyway, do read the whole thing.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Karl Popper’s Falsifiability: The Foreign Emoluments Clause—A Debate Between Constitutional Eloi and Constitutional Morlocks.

Related: Sen Blumenthal, Suing Trump Over Emoluments, Appears to Be in ‘Violation’ Himself.