HMM: Will Russia Abandon The OPEC+ Oil Deal?

OPEC’s task in estimating global oil supply going forward has been made more difficult by mounting uncertainty over Russian oil supplies to Europe via the Druzhba pipeline, expectations of further production declines in Venezuela, and the possibility of an outage in Libya, which is in the midst of a civil war with rival armies fighting for the capital Tripoli.

Amidst all this, Russia sent several ambiguous messages to the market last month. First, its Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that OPEC and Russia might choose to fight for market share against the U.S., even if this means quitting the OPEC+ deal and sending oil prices significantly lower.

Then at the end of last month, Putin said that he hoped the Saudis wouldn’t break their promises under the OPEC+ deal, adding that he hadn’t heard of anyone indicating willingness to quit the agreement.

As for Russia itself, it has been struggling to reduce its oil production to the agreed upon level under the pact.

Moreover, Russian oil companies have been balking at the output cuts because the OPEC+ deal has been meddling with their production growth plans.

The amazing thing about OPEC’s years-long effort to cut production and inflate prices is how well it’s worked. Success at raising prices usually induces cheating which causes prices to fall again. That hasn’t happened (yet) this time around, which I’ve taken as an indicator at just how desperate OPEC/Russia have become in the face of ever-increasing American fracking.

But maybe new cracks are finally starting to form.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Lindsay Graham Working to Declassify FISA Docs. “So, the bottom line is the dossier has never been independently confirmed. It was used to get a warrant. They knew the author of the dossier was on the Democrat Party payroll. He hated Trump; they got the warrant anyway. Most Americans should be very upset about that. I’m very upset about it. And we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

Good.

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Biden Declares U.S. Has ‘Obligation’ To Give Taxpayer-Funded Healthcare To Illegal Aliens.

OHIO: The Midwest state where Democrats should give up already.

Republicans have come a long way since 2012, when I ran Mitt Romney’s campaign in Ohio. President Barack Obama took an op-ed Romney had written with the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” four years earlier and used it to slam the GOP. Romney never had an answer to Obama’s attack depicting Romney as a heartless corporate raider who cared more about profits than people.

“When some wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt, we made a bet on American workers, on the ingenuity of American companies,” Obama said in a Columbus speech in May of 2012. He was still at it in October: “[We] refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later, that bet is paying off in a big way.” I had nightmares about that “bankrupt” headline; I couldn’t turn on a TV or pick up a newspaper without seeing Obama’s team relentlessly hammering that nail.

The gambit worked perfectly: Obama bested Romney by three points in Ohio, en route to winning a second term.

But four years later, Ohioans, like many other Midwestern voters, had soured on Democrats, with Trump owning Hillary Clinton by eight points. In fact, Trump’s margin of victory in Ohio was bigger than Georgia (5) and Arizona (3.5), states that pundits routinely think of as being redder than Ohio. And Trump’s work in the state will make it more likely than not that Trump will outperform any earlier poll that predicts a Democratic edge.

Flashback: Democrats Can Kiss Ohio Goodbye.

ROBERT REICH, CLOSET REPUBLICAN? There are many reasons not to impeach Trump. The House should do it anyway.

JON CALDERA: The fun police come for CSU’s ‘Undie Run.’

Today the buzz-kills at Colorado State University are trying to snuff out the Undie Run. This prestigious collegiate tradition happens before the start of final exams as students run across campus clothed in only their underwear.

Not quite the high-brow sophistication of full-on streaking, which along with Led Zeppelin IV were the only real achievements of the 1970s, the Undie Run is a tip-of-the-hat to the public nudity of old.

CSU officials have emailed parents asking them to discourage their kids from participating.

There was a time when the range of helicopter parenting could not extend to college, which was the key ingredient in college fun.

CSU’s many nanny worries include, “After-parties where students remain in their underwear, creating a tone that breeds harmful situations for our students.”

Tone? Today’s kids are deluged with squishy, vague terms like “tone.” So, exactly what should be the tone of a college kegger?

I can barely keep pants on my kids and they still live at home.

SCIENCE DENIERS: Expert Psychologist Blocked on Twitter for Expressing Clinical Opinion on Transgenderism.

KISS KISS, BANG BANG: Woman arrested for trespassing at CIA headquarters asked to meet with ‘Agent Penis,’ officials say.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: An elderly man is dead after a young woman makes false accusation of sexual assault against him.

YES: Is Samsung About to Fold on its Galaxy Fold Folding Phone?

DISPATCHES FROM A REMARKABLY SCANDAL-FREE ADMINISTRATION: Former Rap Star To Be Charged With Accepting Foreign Donations for Obama Super PAC.

DAVID BROOKS: Democrats Are “Making A Terrible Mistake” On Contempt, Destroying Checks And Balances.

This constitutional crisis is just for show. Partly the Democrats want the show because it just feels good to bash the administration. “This has had a cathartic effect on the Democrats because we have finally been able to find a way to fight back at the obstructionism,” Representative Jamie Raskin told my Times colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

Partly they are trying to appease the wing of the party that is calling for impeachment right away. The party leaders generally opposed impeachment for sensible reasons. It would be impossible to win a conviction in the Senate without some Republican cooperation and overwhelming popular support — which doesn’t exist. It’s much better for the Democrats if they focus media attention on their presidential candidates. A Trump vs. Nadler media war is exactly what Trump wants.

The problem with any policy of appeasement is that it rarely appeases; it only emboldens. And that’s what’s happening. You can feel the atmosphere in the Democratic Party changing, getting more passionate, getting more caught up in the back-and-forth combat with Trump, getting more whipped up into impeachment furor.

A bunch of needless “But Trump did it first!” stuff aside, when Brooks is right, he’s right.

FEATURE NOT A BUG: Dems’ Campaign Finance Bill Could Be a Privacy Nightmare.

ANDREW MALCOLM: What These Wannabe Dem Presidents Plan For U$.

• Slap a new tax on banks with more than $50 million in assets. Kamala Harris especially likes this one, which would bring in an estimated $61 billion. Banks are big and bad, unless you want or have home mortgage.

• Increase by 88 percent the amount of income Americans must pay Social Security taxes on from the current $132,900 up to at least a quarter-million. Maybe more. Yeh, sure, some middle-class families will be caught in the cash net. But see, silly person who doesn’t understand how government works, they’re spending all the current Social Security tax income already. So, they need more for new programs, probably another $800+ billion.

• People are making too much money from investments that can help create jobs. So, jack the capital gains by 50 percent to 30 percent. That might rake in more than $600 billion, assuming it doesn’t stop much investing..

• And let’s cut into that mortgage interest tax deduction. Too many Americans are owning or buying homes and affording it. That’s worth a good $972 billion at least.

• Here’s a good one: Hike the federal tax on a gallon of gasoline by “only” 10 cents, which is actually 65 percent. This should bring in another $170 billion. Sure, it hits regular working folks the hardest, but we all must make financial sacrifices for the greener good. Also, tell town halls the money will pay for infrastructure repairs. That’s a good line. Some Republicans might even go for it, unless they know Grover Norquist.

• Oh, and index that enlarged gas tax to inflation so it’ll increase automatically forever and politicians won’t have to wait another 26 years for new revenues.

• Finally – well, it’s not really final because there are many other tax ideas – let’s install a value-added tax. This will be a five percent levy on every step of any item’s production process. Europe loves them. Yes, yes, it would hike consumer prices considerably. But it would bring in – are you sitting down? – nearly $6.2 Trillion.

“Vote Democrat If You Think You Have Too Much Money” doesn’t seem like a great pitch, but what do I know?

ZUCKERBERG UNDER FIRE: Any Attempt to Remove Him from Facebook Is Doomed. “Not since Apple’s iMac-iPod-iPhone-iPad heyday under Steve Jobs’ second regime has a company been a more perfect reflection of its founder. But whatever the company’s predations, lapses, or silencing of dissent, you can’t cleave Zuckerberg from Facebook any more than you can separate a cyborg’s human brain from its robot body.”

ASSASSIN’S CREED (21ST CENTURY EDITION): Drones used missiles with knife warhead to take out single terrorist targets.

“To the targeted person, it is as if a speeding anvil fell from the sky,” according to the WSJ. Some officials referred to the weapon as “the flying Ginsu,” because the blades can cut through concrete, sheet metal, and other materials surrounding a target.

The R9X was developed in part as a response to President Barack Obama’s mandate to reduce civilian casualties in drone strikes, especially in light of the tactic adopted by leaders of targeted terrorist and insurgent organizations (such as the leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda) of using women and children as a human shield in hopes of avoiding drone strikes. While the missile was apparently in development as far back as 2011, the exact timeline of development was not revealed by officials; a similar weapon was considered as an option to take out Osama bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan before it was decided to send Navy SEAL operators in instead.

According to the Journal’s sources, the DOD has only used the R9X about six times. The Journal confirmed two strikes—one, in January of 2019 by the Air Force against Jamal al-Badawi, the individual accused of being the mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole (a strike that the Pentagon has officially acknowledged, but without disclosing the weapons used); and a CIA strike against Al Qaeda leader Ahmad Hasan Abu Khayr al-Masri in February of 2017. In both cases, the strikes took out the targets but did not blow up the vehicles they were in—in the case of the attack on al-Masri, there was only a hole in the roof of his Kia and a crack in the windshield.

It’s like something out of a steampunk story, but real.

AN UNEXPECTED BIT OF GOOD NEWS: Biden Echoes Libertarians’ Call on Occupational Licensing.

“You know if you are a hair braider, you braid people’s hair, you have to get a license to do something like 400 hours of training,” he said before pausing, admitting he should be “more careful” with his words, and concluding that licensing requirements were part of a greater unseen effort “not to help the worker.”

The union crowd in Washington, D.C., gave the gaffe-prone politician a laugh, and three weeks later at his presidential campaign kickoff, Biden recycled the talking point.

“Why should someone who braids hair have to get 600 hours of training? It makes no sense,” he told another labor crowd, this one packed into a union hall in Pittsburgh. “They’re making it harder and harder in a whole range of professions, all to keep competition down.”

Why, Biden continued, should unionized pipefitters, firefighters, and steelworkers care about “getting rid of these unnecessary hoops out there? Because we have to restore America’s ability and individual American’s ability to fight for their own dignity.”

The union members in the crowd and the workers standing behind the candidate applauded again — reliably Democratic voters all cheering the kind of government deregulation that has been the pet project of libertarian billionaires like Charles and David Koch for half a decade. It was a moment of pragmatic centrism.

Ball’s in your court, GOP — are you going to let Joe Biden get to your right on an economic liberty issue?

FAKE NEWS: Washington Post implies Trump encourages shooting border crossers.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Oregon Elementary School Teacher Tried to Convince 8-Year-Old Student He’s Transgender.

SPENGLER: The Huelefant in the Parlor.

The grand battle of the Trade Avengers in Washington really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. What matters is the implosion of America’s technological predominance, exemplified by the Trump administration’s strategic humiliation over Fifth Generation (5G) mobile broadband.

In 1258 the Mongols appeared before the gates of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Dynasty. Caliph Al-Musta’sim assumed that the capital’s 12-foot-thick walls would protect the city against lightly-armed Mongol horsemen, but the Mongols brought with them a thousand Chinese siege engineers. The Chinese mercenaries breached the walls within three weeks and the Mongols killed most of the city’s million residents.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, who last week claimed that China is “stealing its way up the economic ladder,” is the 21st-century counterpart of Al-Musta’sim, the feckless caliph of Baghdad. Huawei Technologies, the spearhead of China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), isn’t a Chinese company, but an imperial juggernaut that crushes its competition and employs their intellectual resources. By 2013 it employed 40,000 foreigners–mostly in R&D– out of a workforce of 150,000. I think it foolish to think that the Chinese can’t innovate, but it doesn’t matter whether they can or not, any more than the siege skills of Mongol horsemen mattered in 1258.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

WILLIAM MURCHISON: Joe Biden: Soul Man. “The former senator and veep thinks Trump-era America needs some moral straightening out.”

The second problem with the “soul” stuff is easily more important. It is the assertion that politics fundamentally shapes our souls. The truth is, our souls shape our politics, maybe more so than Aristotle anticipated in an era unblessed with talk shows and the internet. In any kind of democracy, the majority tends, over the long if not the short term, to get the kind of government it wants. That could be one of honorable men and women acting—to speak broadly, as you have to in politics—with honorable intentions for the sensible cure of public problems. On the other hand, you might get a coterie of mush-brained incompetents. You open yourself, in theory, to government by a gang of rascals and crooks and thoroughgoing immoralists.

You do the best you can. But everything depends on premises. With the right premises, the voters win; with the wrong ones, they lose. No politician can render it otherwise, not even Biden.

So what are premises? They are moral understandings—what else? It’s what’s stuffed in human heads and hearts at various levels of pre-political life. By preachers and priests. By good parents and grandparents. By good teachers and the authors of good books. I can’t refrain from mentioning, for that matter, a technicolor world that faded some time ago to sepia: the entertainment industry and its semi-commendable premises of wisdom and good taste.

From hereabouts come the ideals, the ideas, the assumptions that the voter carries to the polls. They guide the hands that shade in the ovals that register our choices on election day; they do so more tellingly, more lastingly, than all the solemn rants that pass for political wisdom on the talk shows.

Biden, the Moses who would straighten us all out if you take him at his word, has in mind a miracle nearly as large as the parting of the Red Sea.

And on a more practical level, I’m not sure the country wants to hear an 18-month-long lecture on morality from a guy who made his son filthy rich playing footsie with Moscow and Beijing.

CAN’T KEEP UP THE SAME OLD GAME: Beto O’Rourke Approaching ‘Statistically Insignificant’ Territory in New Hampshire Poll. “‘White Obama’ looking more and more like a white Rubio.”

Heh™.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Comey’s Break with Reality Continues at CNN Town Hall. “Papadopoulos didn’t talk to RUSSIANS, unless you are pretending that western intelligence asset Joseph Mifsud is really working for the RUSSIANS. Read all about Joseph Mifsud in Lee Smith’s terrific story, The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate. If Comey really believes his own crap, why didn’t the FBI go to Trump and tell him one of his associates was involved with the RUSSIANS?”

OH: Intelligence analyst charged with leaking top-secret information to left-wing reporter Jeremy Scahill.

Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, Tenn., was arrested on federal charges Thursday. The reporter that Hale leaked this information to is not named in the indictment, but the charging document identifies him as Jeremy Scahill of the Intercept, an outspoken critic of America’s military activities overseas.

Hale “printed off a series of Secret and Top Secret documents through his position with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, many of which he then provided to the reporter.”

The Intercept is having a bad couple of weeks.

PENNY WISE, POUND FOOLISH: Former Boeing Engineers Say Relentless Cost-Cutting Sacrificed Safety.

Boeing got what it wanted: Pilots moving from a 737-800 to the 737 Max would need at most Level B training, which they could complete in an hour or two on an iPad. That let airlines deploy the $120 million plane more quickly. For Boeing, it was an important selling point that gave customers one less reason to defect to its European rival Airbus SE.

Since the crashes of two Maxes within five months—a Lion Air flight last October and an Ethiopian Airlines flight this March—the pressure and maneuvering around simulator training has struck Ludtke as essential to understanding how an emphasis on costs twisted a process that’s supposed to produce the best, safest planes. “They could have done better and should have done better, but better wasn’t an option,” says Ludtke, who started at Boeing in 1996 and holds two U.S. patents for flight crew alerting systems. Federal investigators probing the Max recently interviewed Ludtke for hours about the connection between simulator requirements and the new software system linked to the crashes, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS.

Managers didn’t merely insist to employees that no designs should lead to Level D training. They also made their desires known to the FAA team in charge of 737 training requirements, which was led by Stacey Klein, who’d previously been a pilot at now-defunct Skyway Airlines for six years. “She had no engineering background, her airplane experience was very limited,” Ludtke says. “It was just an impossible scenario.”

What a mess.