presidential election

After it emerged courtesy of Mike Cernovich that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice had made numerous requests to “unmask” the identities of Americans associated with President Trump in intelligence reports, senator Rand Paul who in recent days has been on increasingly better terms with the president and even went golfing with him this weekend, said Rice should testify under oath about her involvment in a potentially illegal scandal that she herself denied she had any knowledge of as recently as 2 weeks ago.

Update: according to Telesur, Lenin Moreno has won the Ecuadorian presidential election Sunday. With 94 percent of the vote counted, Lenin defeated former banker Guillermo Lasso, candidate for the right-wing alliance with 51.15 percent to 48.85 percent, according to results issued by the country’s National Electoral Council on Sunday at 8:20 p.m. The CNE said it was a transparent and successful election process. A victory for Moreno means that Assange will be safe from expulsion from Ecuador's London embassy  for the immediate future.

Authored op-ed by Michael Doran via The Hill,

Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Adam Schiff have both castigated Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for his handling of the inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.  They should think twice.  The issue that has recently seized Nunes is of vital importance to anyone who cares about fundamental civil liberties.

Authored by Robert Parry via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It’s almost getting comical how everything that happens in the United States gets blamed on Russia! Russia! Russia! And, if any American points out the absurdity of this argument, he or she must be a “Moscow stooge” or a “Putin puppet.”

The FX series, “The Americans,” a spy thriller about two deep-cover Soviet spies in the 1980s

While investors had largely given Venezuela's economic catastrophe the benefit of the doubt for the past two years as crude collapsed and the country's CDS soared to record highs only to normalize subsequently, yesterday bond investors got very nervous for the first time in a while, as the Venezuela 9.25% of 2027 bonds crashed on fears a presidential coup may be imminent after Wednesday's decision by the pro-Maduro supreme court to assume the functions of congress, in effect making Venezuela a Maduro dictatorship.