America

In a day when Trump supporters organized peaceful rallies across the nation in support of the president, violence broke out Saturday in the liberal, if not quite tolerant, west coast capital of Berkeley, when Trump fans were reportedly provoked by counter-protesters. At a Berkely park across the bay from San Francisco, protesters from both sides struck one another over the head with wooden sticks and Trump supporters fired pepper spray while police in riot gear stood at a distance, Reuters reports.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug73PNrnH94

Speaker Paul Ryan has confirmed that the Obama administration illegally and unconstitutionally wiretapped Donald Trump’s private phone.  In an interview on Special Report with Brett Baier, Ryan confirmed that Obama ordered for the wiretapping of Trump Tower: BAIER: Are you concerned, on the flip side, that the Obama administration may have been surveilling members of the Trump campaign in a pretty detailed investigation during the election? RYAN: Well, I don’t think that’s the case.

Via Nicholas Eberstadt of CommentaryMagazine.com,

On the morning of November 9, 2016, America’s elite—its talking and deciding classes—woke up to a country they did not know. To most privileged and well-educated Americans, especially those living in its bicoastal bastions, the election of Donald Trump had been a thing almost impossible even to imagine. What sort of country would go and elect someone like Trump as president? Certainly not one they were familiar with, or understood anything about.

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Via Mac Slavo of SHTFPlan.com,

While Oklahoma has had a handful of notable earthquakes over the past century, it was essentially never an earthquake state.

And rightfully so, given that the USGS and other officials, up until quite recently, ranked Oklahoma’s earthquake hazard level at the second lowest level, with a patch of slightly elevated, but still moderately low areas:

In 2015, President Obama and Republican congressional leaders agreed to suspend the federal debt ceiling until March 15, 2017. After that date – less then two weeks from now – the Treasury will surpass its cumulative $20 trillion borrowing authority.

And while the stock market (and VIX) signal utter calm, signs of stress are very clear in America's money markets. Swap spreads are suggesting traders are getting nervous that any hiccup in efforts to remove the burden could trigger a shortage on short-term government securities.