Record highs for stocks, 10 year lows for the yield curve…

Small Caps were in risk-off mode today (having oscillated this week) as the S&P, Dow hugged the unchanged line and Nasdaq was modestly bid ahead of tonight’s earnings…

The moves post-FOMC were marginal…

The S&P dipped out of the gate to unchanged and then VIX was clubbed like a baby seal to get it green again…

FANG Stocks rallied ince again ahead of tonight’s earnings…

Notably, stock that would benefit most from corporate tax reform have notably underpeformed ahead of tomorrow’s tax plan release…

High Yield bond prices tumbled below key technical support…

Treasury yields were mixed today with the long-end outperforming – notably moving after the refunding news this morning…

The yield curve continues to collapse…

To new 10 year flats…

The Dollar Index managed very minor gains today but traded in a very narrow range…

All commodities are higher on the week with silver leading…

WTI/RBOB sank after DOE data disappointed compared to API – despite more OPEC jawboning from UAE…

We also note that copper futures continue to rebound and remains massively – and oddly – decoupled from raw industrial commodity prices…

Finally, Bitcoin surged to another new record today above $6600…up 15% since Friday...

Following September’s big hurricane-precipitated slowdown in the labor market, moments ago ADP reported that in September private payrolls rebounded from a downward revised 110K (from 135K), which was still significantly higher than the BLS’ own negative print, to 235K beating expectations of a 200K print (which emerged from a decided wide range of estimates, from 135K to 340K) and the highest since March.

Commenting on the stronger than expected print, Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute said “The job market remains healthy and hiring bounced back with one of the best performances we’ve seen all year. Although the service providing sector was hard hit last month due to the weather, we saw significant growth in professional services, especially in the higher paid professional technical jobs. Additionally, small businesses rebounded well from the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, posting very strong gains.”

ADP’s Mark Zandi, also chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said, “The job market rebounded strongly from the hit it took from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Resurgence in construction jobs shows the rebuilding is already in full swing. Looking through the hurricane-created volatility, job growth is robust.”

Some more details, starting with Change in Nonfarm Private Employment:

Change in Total Nonfarm Private Employment

The full breakdown:

The ADP inforgraphic:

Against disappointing China PMIs, US Manufacturing PMI surged back near 2017 highs in October – shrugging off the efects of recent storms, floods, and wildfires – with factory jobs near their best since the financial crisis and gains broadening out to smaller firms too. However, ISM Manufacturing disappointed, falling back from 13 year highs.

So take your pick... is manufacturing momentum picking up (PMI) or fading (ISM)?

Under the hood, ISM reported weaker production, lower prices paid, and weaker new orders and while PMI reported a surge to 28-month highs for employment, ISM saw a drop to 3 month lows.

As a reminder, in September, the ISM’s gauge was inflated by a surge in the supplier deliveries index, indicating longer lead times as producers scrambled to get back to normal operations following hurricanes Harvey and Irma. That measure fell in October while remaining well above its average from the first eight months of 2017.

ISM Respondents were generally positive with most comments focused on prices…

“Raw material costs on the rise, but purchasing operation has navigated shortages caused by hurricanes.” (Chemical Products)

 

“Incoming orders are strong, mainly due to recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Backlogs are up due to operating inefficiencies.” (Machinery)

 

“Hurricanes have caused shortages in the resin market, resulting in price increases, inventory constraints and increased lead times.” (Computer & Electronic Products)

 

“Ongoing market growth. Minimal impact expected from hurricanes so far in this season.” (Miscellaneous Manufacturing)

 

“Business seems to be a bit depressed due to the storms last month, but is picking back up.” (Fabricated Metal Products)

 

“Business continues to be better than expected.”(Transportation Equipment)

 

“Business is good. Supplier deliveries have extended. Things are really picking up.” (Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products)

 

“Our plants are sold out for 2017 — we can’t take any new orders.” (Nonmetallic Mineral Products)

 

“In plastics processing, Hurricane Harvey is the reason for every price increase being announced — and virtually all suppliers are announcing price increases.” (Plastics & Rubber Products)

However, commenting on the final PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit was relatively exuberant:

“US manufacturing stepped up a gear at the start of the fourth quarter, boding well for higher factory production to support robust economic growth in the closing months of 2017.

 

“Production volumes jumped higher on the back of a substantial improvement in order book inflows, in part due to supply chains returning to normal after the hurricanes but also reflecting a combination of strong underlying demand.

 

“Factory jobs growth has also picked up to one of the strongest since the global financial crisis, underscoring the improvement in optimism about future trading among manufacturers.

 

“An important change in October was the broadening out of the expansion to smaller firms, which have lagged behind the strong growth reported by larger rivals throughout much of the year to date but under-performed to a lesser extent in October.”

Along with this morning’s ADP data, it certainly bodes well for Friday’s payrolls print…

True to form, the Atlanta Fed – which has a habit of overshooting massively at the start of the quarter based on optimistic estimates only to ease sharply lower on its GDP “nowcast” as the “hard” data comes in – has unveiled its latest Q4 GDP estimate , which the regional Fed expects to print at a blistering 4.5%. The number is more than 50% higher the previous Q4 guesstimate of 2.9%.

Why the surge? The Atlanta Fed looked at today’s mfg ISM report and effectively doubled its forecast for real consumer spending growth and real private fixed investment growth increased from 2.8% and 4.4% , respectively, to 4.1%  and 8.8%, respectively. Breaking down the estimate, which was boosted by excess hurricane-related spending, by its constituent components:

• Latest release affecting the model was ISM manufacturing, construction spending
• PCE contribution est. at 2.80%
• Nonresidential equipment investment contribution est. at 0.95%
• Nonresidential intellectual property products investment contribution est. at 0.18%
• Nonresidential structures investment contribution est. at -0.08%
• Residential investment contribution est. at 0.37%
• Government contribution est. at 0.31%
• Net exports contribution est. at -0.20%

Here is the commentary:

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2017 is 4.5 percent on November 1, up from 2.9 percent on October 30. The forecasts of real consumer spending growth and real private fixed investment growth increased from 2.8 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively, to 4.1 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively, after this morning’s Manufacturing ISM Report On Business from the Institute for Supply Management. The model’s estimate of the dynamic factor for October—normalized to have mean 0 and standard deviation 1 and used to forecast the yet-to-be released monthly GDP source data—increased from 0.04 to 1.43 after the ISM report.

If accurate, this would be the highest pace of economic growth since Q3 2014, and the fourth highest quarterly GDP number since the financial crisis.

We now await to see if the forecast from the New York Fed will validate this euphoric projection.

At the last FOMC meeting – on September 20th – Janet Yellen and her merry band of failed forecasters proclaimed that the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet would be allowed to normalize with reinvestments slowed or stopped in October.

There’s just one thing…

The Federal Reserve balance sheet has risen by over $5 billion in October – the biggest monthly rise since February.

Now, we are well aware of the lags in reporting data from SOMA but this is as of last Wednesday and so unless The Fed suddenly dumped over $5 billion in its balance sheet on Thursday and Friday, we suspect ‘normalization’ means something different to the PhDs at The Fed than it does to the average joe.

U.S. auto sales for the month of October came in mostly mixed with Fiat and GM being the biggest losers relative to street estimates and Ford beating on strong truck and fleet sales.  GM forecasts that the overall SAAR for the month ended up around 18mm units, versus 17.5mm expected, as sales remain elevated due to hurricane-related replacements.  Here’s more from Detroit News:

General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV on Wednesday reported sales declines in October, while Ford Motor Co. saw sales jump 6.2 percent compared to the same month a year ago thanks to strong truck and fleet sales.

 

Fiat Chrysler reported a 13 percent drop compared to the same month a year ago, due to a 43 percent decline in fleet sales compared to last year. GM sales fell 2.2 percent due largely to slumping Buick and Chevrolet deliveries; only the automaker’s GMC brand saw a bump in sales last month, up 4.6 percent.

 

But overall, analysts expect a relatively strong sales month due to buyers in the Texas and Florida replacing storm-damaged vehicles, and generous sales incentives being offered by carmakers.

 

GM reported it sold 252,813 vehicles last month, with pickups up 9 percent to 84,902, and crossover sales were up 12 percent. Fiat Chrysler sold 153,373 vehicles in October. Retail sales fell 4 percent, though the company’s Ram and Jeep brands had strong months, according to the automaker. Ford sold 200,436 vehicles; 93,248 of those were trucks.

Of course, more important than the headline numbers, which are skewed by the recent hurricanes, is the fact that incentive spending continues to rise despite abnormally strong demand and production cuts already implemented earlier this year.

“Although the headline shows a small decline in sales, October looks relatively strong for the industry, as evidenced by the nearly 18 million (seasonally adjusted annual rate),” said Tim Fleming, analyst for Kelley Blue Book.

 

Fleming said some of the strength can be attributed to replacement demand that continues in Texas and Florida due to hurricanes. Perhaps more importantly, he said, higher incentive-spending by carmakers is playing a role: “Even with production cuts this year, incentives are on the rise and have reached 11 percent of average transaction prices. This is an indicator that new-vehicle demand is still contracting, and production cuts could be on the horizon to prevent oversupplies.”

 

Analysts at Edmunds forecast a steeper year-over-year decline at 3.5 percent. But the automakers will still see a lift from vehicle recovery sales due to hurricane season.

 

“While replacement demand in Houston was higher in September, we anticipate that hurricane recovery efforts will continue to supplement October vehicle sales in the market,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds executive director of industry analysis. “In Florida, far fewer vehicles were lost to flood damage, but we expect to see an incremental boost in vehicle sales primarily from shoppers who may have delayed their purchases due to the storm.”

Meanwhile, despite the best hopes of wall street that recent hurricanes would help solve GM’s inventory problem, the company’s inventory days actually crept up in October compared to the previous month.

And here are more highlights from Stone McCarthy Research on the breakdown of car/truck sales mix for the month:

Car sales and truck sales are both coming in below expectations so far. Part of the reason for last month’s strength in car sales was due to fleet sales, so we expect to see some of the replacement sales after Hurricanes Irma and Harvey showing up more in this month. Given their sales figures, domestic light vehicle sales for October look to be at about 13.8 million units, below that of the 14.1 million selling pace of September.

 

General Motors domestic car sales came in below our expectations, and were down over 23% from last year.Domestic light truck sales for GM in October were in line with our estimate, and were up 3.5% from last year.

 

Domestic car sales were also weaker than we expected for Ford, though they saw the smallest year over year decline of the big three. Ford’s domestic light truck sales were a bit stronger than we expected. Their 12.3% year over year rise was the largest of the big three.

 

Chrysler domestic car were also a bit lower than we expected, and were also down about 23% year over year. Their light truck sales saw a decline of over 10% from last year, just as we expected them to.

 

Honda, Toyota, and Volkswagen sales all came in below our expectations.

 

Including the Detroit Three, we project the selling pace for domestic cars in October to come to 4.71 million units (saar) versus 4.91 million in September. We expect car sales to decline 6.6% from last October. We look for the selling pace for October light trucks to reach a 9.07 million unit selling pace (saar), compared to September’s 9.15 million selling pace, a 0.1% decrease in light truck sales from last October.

So what say you?  Still time to buy the hurricane/incentive/subprime-fueled demand surge in auto sales or time to move on?

If there is one thing we know about President Trump, it is that he likes “winning,” and that means someone else is “losing.” If the following chart is anything to go by (and anything but ‘transitory’) then President Trump should be smiling…

While US manufacturing is rebounding back to cycle highs, Mexico’s manufacturing economy has collapsed into contraction to record lows as the natural disaster that hit Mexico led to a deterioration in the health of the manufacturing sector in October, with companies signalling lower output and new orders.

Commenting on the IHS Mexico Manufacturing PMI survey data, Aashna Dodhia, Economist at IHS Markit and author of the report, said:

“In light of the recent natural disaster faced by Mexico, the manufacturing sector fell into contraction territory for the first time in over four years.

 

The disruptions from the earthquakes were extensive, with output, new orders and employment all down since September.

 

“Meanwhile, currency volatility resulted in the strongest rate of input cost inflation since June, while factories sought to protect margins by raising their charges.

 

Looking ahead, economic uncertainty remained a key area of concern, with business sentiment the weakest since March.”

Odd that in the US, natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, and wildfires appear to be just shrugged of by the survey data… but in Mexico – there is an actual ‘slowdown’ when the world implodes. We wonder which is more ‘real’.

In a proposal which will further infuriate Democrats, moments ago Trump suggested repealing Obamacare’s individual mandate to fund his proposed tax cut.

“Wouldn’t it be great to repeal the very unfair and unpopular individual mandate in ObamaCare and use those savings for further tax cuts for the Middle Class. The House and Senate should consider ASAP as the process of final approval moves along. Push Biggest Tax Cuts EVER,” President Trump says in series of posts on Twitter.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that repealing the mandate would save the government $416 billion over a decade. The mandate requires most people to pay a fine to the IRS if they do not have health insurance.

Trump’s proposal echoes a similar suggestion from Sen. Tom Cotton, who suggested it could free up to an additional $300 billion in money for tax cuts. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said this week that he wouldn’t rule out including the  repeal of the mandate in the legislation, although as Bloomberg notes it is unclear whether such a plan could pass in the Senate, which has struggled to pass Obamacare repeal legislation.

Other top Republicans have rejected the idea, including House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). They fear adding mandate repeal into the mix would jeopardize tax reform.

As reported yesterday, the GOP delayed its release of tax bill, as a result of last minute disagreement over the contents.  As discussed previously, this may be just the first of several delays as somehow the proposal, now likely hobbled by over $1 trillion on the revenue side as it appears there will be no significant change to the treatment of local and state tax deductions, has to reconcile a plethora of conflicting items including:

• Are middle-class cuts from the budget framework (like doubling the standard deduction and expanded child tax credits) included?
  Is the SALT deduction included (or capped in some way)?
• What level is the corporate tax rate (over/under Trump’s 20% target)
• Is there a fourth tax bracket (rumblings suggest incomes above 1mm USD would be affected)
•    Is the tax cut retroactive to Jan. 1, 2017?
• Is there a repatriation deal for money kept overseas?
• Does it add to the deficit?  If so, how much?
• Will extraneous issues be slipped into the draft to entice specific voters?
  • Minimum wage hike
  • Border wall funding
  • Debt ceiling compromise
  • Planned parenthood funding

Authored by David Stockman via David Stockman’s Contra Corner blog,

This is how the Deep State crushes disobedience by the unwashed American public. It indicts not only ham sandwiches but, apparently, political infants in diapers too, if that’s what it takes. Hence the sudden notoriety of Baby George Papadopoulos, who pled guilty to “lying” about an essentially immaterial date to the FBI.

Oh, and by all signs and signals that plea came after this 30 year-old novice had been wearing a wire for several months.

So here’s how this noxious act of bullying by Robert Mueller’s Federally-deputized thugs came down. It seems that during the early months of 2016, when Trump was winning primary after primary against all mainstream media expectations, the Donald’s establishment betters began attacking his foreign policy credentials with special malice aforethought.

That was mainly owing to his sensible suggestion that it would be better to seek rapprochement with Russia rather than pursue Hillary’s Cold War 2.0 and that 25 years after the disappearance of the Soviet Union from the pages of history that NATO was obsolete.

Since this totally plausible (and correct) viewpoint was deeply offensive to the Imperial City’s group think and threatened the Warfare State’s existential need for a fearsome enemy, Trump’s ruminations about making a deal with Putin were belittled. They were, in fact, attributed not to a fresh look at the realities abroad or the possibility that homeland security does not require a global empire, but to the candidate’s lack of any pedigreed foreign policy advisors.

Indeed, when it came to the Republican-oriented foreign policy establishment—nearly all of which had joined the Never Trump cause—-the Donald added insult to injury. That is, by suggesting he got his foreign policy views watching TV (like most of Washington) and that he could do a better job against terrorism than the Pentagon generals (not hard).

At length, however, the “who are your foreign policy advisors” meme got so relentless that the Donald relented. On March 21, 2016 he announced a group of five advisors that exactly no one who was anyone in the Imperial City had ever heard of, and for good reason.

The group included two recycled DOD flunkies, an anti-Muslim fanatic from the Lebanon religious wars and two kids of no accomplishment in the foreign policy field whatsoever. In a word, the foreign policy establishment’s boycott of the Trump campaign at that stage was 100% effective.

Indeed, under a snarky headline the next day about how the new Trump foreign policy team “baffles GOP experts”, Politico laid on the disdain good and hard:

“I don’t know any of them,” said Kori Schake, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a former official in the George W. Bush State Department. “National security is hard to do well even with first-rate people. It’s almost impossible to do well with third-rate people.”

One of the five, of course, was Carter Page who had actually spent time in Moscow years earlier working as a stock broker and didn’t exactly share Hillary’s fulminations that Putin was Adolph Hitler incarnate.

So Politico made very clear that Mr. Page was apparently some kind of Kremlin stooge for uttering true facts about Russia.

To wit, that Russia had not “invaded” Ukraine, but to the contrary, the February 2014 coup on the streets of Kiev was fomented, funded, and illegally installed in power by Washington agents on the ground. Among others, these included the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland (“Yats is our man”), CIA operatives under embassy cover, the National Endowment for Democracy and its NGO subalterns and, especially, the War Party’s roving Viceroy, Senator John McCain:

Page, who has worked for Merrill Lynch in Moscow, has accused the State Department’s top official for Ukraine and Russia, Victoria Nuland, of “fomenting” the 2014 revolution that overthrew Ukraine’s government. That charge is often lodged by pro-Kremlin media outlets but is strongly disputed by the Obama administration.

In this context, Politico made short shrift of young Mr. Papadopoulos and properly so. This kid had no more qualifications to be named among the top five foreign policy advisors to the then near-presumptive GOP nominee than anyone else in the DC phone book—-although at the time Baby George was called to duty he was apparently domiciled in London and perhaps listed in its phone book.

Indeed, after rounding up an ex-Pentagon bean counter, a washed-up general who had “managed” (not well) the US “occupation” of Baghdad in 2003-2004 and Walid Phares, the Lebanese war veteran who claimed that the Moslem Brotherhood had infiltrated the State Department and was fixing to spread “Sharia law” to the towns and villages of America, you almost have the impression that the Donald instructed Ivanka and Jared to check out the Mar-A-Logo sandbox for candidates to round out the rooster.

That’s apparently where Papadopoulos came from because he had graduated from college only in 2009, got two more degrees by 2011 in London, functioned as a junior researcher at Hudson Institute for several years and then “worked” on Ben Carson’s presidential campaign for three months—- if you consider that an actual job.

Per Politico at the time of the announcement:

One of them, George Papadopoulos, is a 2009 college graduate and an international energy lawyer. Papadopoulos had previously advised Ben Carson’s presidential campaign. According to his LinkedIn page, he was a researcher at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., before joining the London Center of International Law Practice, which describes itself as dedicated to “peace and development through international law and dispute resolution.”

 

Papadopoulos’ LinkedIn page also boasts about his role at the 2012 meeting in Geneva of Model U.N., the student role-playing exercise on international diplomacy. It adds that he has “had experience lobbying foreign policy resolutions on Capitol Hill by means of coherent and concise arguments.”

In a word, Baby George’s “crime” came about in the process of trying to put on his Big Boy Pants and get noticed by higher-ups in the campaign. So doing, he came into contact on about March 14 with a London professor who claimed to be plugged into Russian sources with “dirt” about Hillary.

Needless to say, the London professor, one Joseph Mifsud, who had formerly served in a high ranking government position in his native land of, well, Malta (as assistant to the Maltese foreign minister), didn’t know anybody in the Kremlin, either. That is, Mifsud was actually a no count talking to a another no count.

Prior to his appearance on the FBI’s fake stage of international intrigue, in fact, Mifsud had been a “director” of some sort at the London Academy of Diplomacy—–a place that grants masters degrees to young people earnestly endeavoring a career in making diplomacy, not war. That is to say, by the standards of the Imperial City it’s a kind of Quaker Meeting for idealistic diplomats on the road to Nowhere.

As it turned out, George never made any contact with any Russian state officials, didn’t have any meetings with clandestine Putin operatives and came up with no anti-Hillary dirt at all—-despite months of trying and sending loads of essentially unanswered emails up the chain of command at Trump Tower.

In fact, despite sending six emails volunteering his eagerness to set up a meeting between the Donald and Vlad Putin nothing happened. Even the government’s charging document admits these missives were based on Papadopoulos’ conversations with a “Russian National” who claimed to be Putin’s niece, but wasn’t; and someone who claimed to have contacts at Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), but also, apparently, didn’t.

As it turns out, the latter unnamed go-between was one Ivan Timofeev,  a program director at a Russian government-funded think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. The latter was actually a glorified welcome wagon which hosts public meetings with prominent visiting politicians and public figures from the U.S. and other countries.

Indeed, one guest speaker at this forum had been none other than Obama’s former US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul. The latter is actually a fire-breathing Russophobe who can hardly be considered a pal of Putin’s.

In any event, the government’s charging document makes clear that Baby George’s emails got nowhere. Indeed at one point the zealous Mr. Papadopoulos got swatted away by Paul Manafort, who—

…. replied to one such request by saying that “Trump is not doing these trips. It should be someone low-level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

So finding no contacts, no meetings, no”collusion” or anything else validly related to Mueller’s mandate, the latter’s legal gunslingers came up with the usual default “crime” when a criminal investigations comes up empty. To wit, Papadopoulos allegedly perjured himself by telling the FBI early this year that he had met the no count London professor before beginning his service as a Trump advisor.

And that was true enough—except by the lights of the hair-splitting Torquemadas on Team Mueller.

It seems young George met the London Professor on March 14, about a week before the Trump campaign’s official announcement of its Team of Five. But in the kind of twisted gotcha that only jerks with a badge and gun can come up with, Papadopoulos stands guilty of perjury by his own (coerced) plea.

That’s because at the time of the meeting he had already been recruited from the sandbox and “knew” he would be appointed to an advisory committee.

So what!

Trump apparently met with the Five only once and that was for a photo op, and no one running the campaign paid much attention to them, either.

Still, Baby George’s carelessness about the exact dates and sequences of utterly irrelevant and inconsequential events is enough to get him time in one of Uncle Sam’s hospitality suites:

Defendant PAPADOPOULOS acknowledged that the professor had told him about the Russians possessing “dirt” on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the forms of “thousands of emails”, but stated multiple times that he learned the information prior to joining the Campaign. In truth and fact, however, defendant PAPADOPOULOS learned he would be an advisor to the campaign in early March, and met the professor on or about March 14, 2016……

That’s all she wrote. This damning nugget appears on page 2 of the “Statement of Offense” and the balance of the 14 pages is a complete farcical joke. Papadopoulos’ failure to get anywhere with the Russians in his digging for dirt on Hillary would make for a worthy episode starring the rascals of South Park, but that’s about all.

Anyone not involved in the campaign to reverse the 2106 election and remove the Donald from office should be forgiven for splitting a gut laughing when reading this hideous and utterly bogus case against Baby George Papadopoulos.

Every single player in the cast of characters identified by Team Mueller—mostly unnamed by the prosecutors but already sussed out by the press—had no ability to influence anything, let alone 139 million voters in a US election bombarded with upwards of $20 billion worth of reported and unreported campaign expenses, and the mainstream media’s free nonstop campaign in behalf of Hillary.

Yet the document and Monday morning’s announcement are also cause for alarm. The “crime”, if there was any, was the $10 million that the DNC and Clinton campaign spent on the Trump Dossier. Those scurrilous documents were actually purchased for real money on the back streets of Moscow and do cite actual, live Russian MFA sources, not allegedly “MFA-connected” people, who apparently weren’t.

But, of course, that’s not what’s coming down. The self-righteous Mueller, who turned a blind eye to the massive stench of corruption coming out of the Uranium One deal in 2009/2010 when he was FBI director, has only one mission in mind: To mug the American electorate for its audacity in electing Donald Trump President, thereby disturbing the equanimity of the Deep State’s untethered rule.

The truth of the matter, however, is nearly the opposite. Prosecuting anyone—one either side of the partisan aisle—-for marginal and tangential contacts with a Russian government purportedly wishing to “influence” the US election amounts to the height of hypocrisy.

Meddling in the political life, elections and governance of virtually every nation on planet earth—-enemy, foe, rival, neutral and friend, alike—is what Imperial Washington does.

It spends more than $1 billion per year on propaganda operations by the NED and the various agencies of the Board for International Broadcasting. And that’s to say nothing of the tens of billions spent by the CIA, NSA and other elements of the $75 billion per year intelligence community hacking and stealing virtually all communications that course through the worldwide web.

But all of this is lost on the beltway media brats who front for the Deep State. Here is what one of the worst of these scolds and toadies, a “journalist” named Mike Allen, had to say about the Baby George case on his pretentious Axios platform this AM:

Be smart: There is zero doubt — and piles of new evidence — that Russia manipulated our election. This next phase will show if Trump himself was aware or involved, or has any interest in doing anything about it — and how extensively America’s most powerful companies enabled the mass manipulation.

Is this guy kidding?

If there is any evidence of Russia meddling or of hacking the Podesta and DNC emails, it lies right there in the massive NSA server farms which capture all incoming communications to the US and outgoing, too. It is retrievable in an instant, but hasn’t been because it’s not there.

We didn’t need Mueller’s bully boys to bushwhack Baby George to find that out.

Then again, if you don’t recognize that the Deep State and its minions in the press and both party establishments in Washington are pushing the nation to an extra-constitutional removal of a sitting President, you simply aren’t paying attention.

So at least stay out of the casino. That’s where the temblors will hit first.

This must be some kind of record.

The number of publicly disclosed sex-crime investigations targeting disgraced Hollywood studio head Harvey Weinstein has risen to six following media reports that the Beverly Hills Police Department has opened an investigation of its own, while the New York Police Department has opened a second investigation.

Investigations involving the LAPD, Scotland Yard, and FBI were reported last month. In addition to investigating harassment allegations against Weinstein, the Beverly Hills Police Department is also investigating similar allegations involving director James Toback. The department said in a press release Tuesday night that they have received multiple complaints about both the movie mogul Weinstein and the director Toback and are investigating the alleged improprieties. According to a running tally maintained by the LA Times. Toback has been accused of harassment and abuse by more 200 women. Meanwhile, more than 80 women who have accused Weinstein of harassment, groping or rape dating back to the 1970s.

Actresses Asia Argento, Rose McGowan, Lucia Evans and Lysette Anthony have all publicly stated that they were raped or forced to perform a sex act by Weinstein. In Los Angeles, police are investigating an Italian model-actress’ accusations of being forced by Weinstein to have sex with him in her hotel room in 2013.

British police are investigating 11 allegations of sexual assaults against Weinstein that span several decades, sources said Tuesday.

Authorities said the alleged attacks involved seven women and that nine were reported to have occurred on British soil. Three women have stepped forward within the last week, British police said, including one who claimed she was attacked in the early 1990s.

ABC News was first to report that the NYPD has two active cases involving Weinstein.

The alleged victims are Lucia Evans, the actress who previously told the New Yorker Weinstein exposed himself and physically forced her to perform oral sex on him, and another woman who wasn’t named. Importantly, neither case is subject to New York’s statute of limitations.

However, the NYPD reportedly isn’t investigating allegations made by Annabella Sciorra, the actress who went public to the New Yorker saying Weinstein raped her in her apartment in the 1990s.

As part of the ongoing investigation, NYPD detectives traveled in the last two weeks to Montreal to interview a witness, the department said. Detectives have also considered, but have not yet traveled elsewhere, including to Los Angeles. The department’s travels and assistance to departments in other jurisdictions must be connected to the New York City cases.

ABC reports the NYPD and Manhattan DA’s office have received multiple calls to their sex crimes hotlines concerning the disgraced producer. The vast majority of accusations have involved alleged groping or forcible sexual conduct, which are subject to strict statute of limitations and cannot be prosecuted today.

Meanwhile, as Weinstein moves ahead with efforts to sue his former company for terminating him, the New York Post is reporting The Weinstein Company’s talks to obtain a $35 million lifeline from Fortress Investment Group have stalled amid concerns about the flailing Hollywood studio’s finances.

The chances of a deal getting done have recently slid to “roughly 50 percent,” a source told the Post. Bloomberg had reported last week that the financing was imminent.

It was also reported last week that Colony Capital, led by Trump adviser Thomas Barrick Jr., had backed out of plans to purchase the Weinstein Co’s major assets after providing it with a temporary cash infusion.

While the Post cautions that the situation involving Fortress is still fluid, without the money, the company could soon be forced into bankruptcy.