America

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.

What is the "value of citizenship"? That's the question that Nomad Capitalist answers in their 2017 Passport Index, ranking 199 countries using a weighted approach that considers visa-free travel options, the amount of taxes a country levies on citizens who live abroad, along with the nation’s overall global reputation, civil and personal freedoms, and the ability to hold multiple passports simultaneously. And no, America, you’re not even in the top 20.