President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump welcome Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and Madame Monika Babisova to the White House in advance of a bilateral meeting between the two leaders. [Video and Transcript]

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[Transcript] Oval Office – 1:55 P.M. EST – PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, thank you very much. It’s a great honor to have the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. Prime Minister Babiš and Mrs. Babiš, thank you very much for being here. It’s a great honor. Great country.
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Economic analysis can get weedy…. so a simple way to look at productivity is to think about baking bread in your kitchen.
If you were going to bake 4 loaves of bread it might take you 2 hrs start to finish. However, if you were going to bake 8 loaves of bread it would not take you twice as long because most of the tasks can be accomplished with simple increases in batch size, and only minor increases in labor time. Your productivity measured in the last four loaves is higher.
Economic Productivity is measured much the same way, within what’s called a production probability equation. Additionally, if two hours of your time are worth $40, each of four loaves of bread costs $10; but if you make 8 loaves in the same amount of time the labor cost is only $5/per loaf.
From 2007 through 2017 the average rate of productivity increase was 1.3%. In the fourth quarter of 2018 productivity was 1.9%.  That means total business output increased as more product was demanded from within the business operation. Throughout the economy people just wanted more stuff.  However, the most important numbers for MAGAnomics (Main Street USA) center around manufacturing and durable goods.
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Justin from Canada holds a heavily controlled and practiced press conference to discuss the SNC-Lavalin scandal.  The amount of time was limited by plan and schedule; The media audience was limited; the media questioners were carefully pre-selected; the answers were well rehearsed in advance; the statement script was written for maximum use of english and french to navigate details that might later be damaging.
The result:  Justin from Canada delivers a master class in smug condescension, political obfuscation and ridiculous denial of wrongdoing under the pretense of misunderstanding.  Justin from Canada is guilty as heck, and it is obvious he’s using all the familiar catch phrases to keep his far-left coalition defending him. That’s his primary goal.
The Q&A begins at 11:30 of video below.  The central issue comes from the question answered at 19:00 of the video where Trudeau admits his office was attempting to influence the prosecutorial decision of the Attorney General, on behalf of his friends at SNC-Lavalin, and was planning on continuing to do so.

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

It does not appear accidental that each time Justin from Canada starts finding himself in trouble, serious trouble; the same person happens to show up.   In June 2017, Justin was being challenged with a new NAFTA trade agreement… and former President Obama showed up while delivering a speech to the Board of Trade in Montreal.
Fast forward to today…  March 2019 – the Canadian economy has halted; Justin from Canada is embroiled in a growing bribery, corruption and obstruction of justice scandal around SNC-Lavalin; and immediately after he loses two cabinet ministers… former President Obama shows up to deliver a speech to the Board of Trade in Vancouver:

During a question and answer session with Vancouver Board of Trade President Iain Black at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Canada, Obama went into a diatribe about the dangers of rising populism amid national politics. [LINK]
Serendipitous domestic timing for an Obama visit, as the ideological political-wagons are circling to defend Justin from Canada.
Coincidentally, nudge-nudge/wink-wink/say-no-more… say no more… after a coaching/not-coaching session, Justin from Canada has agreed to a heavily controlled press conference on the obstruction scandal tomorrow at 8:00am.
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Earlier today President Donald Trump participated in a meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board at the White House.  [Video and Transcript below]

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[Transcript] – State Dining Room – 4:17 P.M. EST – MS. TRUMP: Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, on behalf of my co-chair, Secretary Ross, and the entire American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, it’s an honor to have here for today’s inaugural board meeting. We have spent the last several hours in excellent discussion with the objective of advancing a national workforce strategy.
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DNC President Tom Perez announced today that Fox News will not host, nor will they be even allowed to broadcast, a Democrat primary debate for the 2020 presidential race.
The DNC is anticipating more than a dozen debates and they will not allow Fox News to broadcast any of them.
In response, President Trump announced he is considering applying the same standard to the left-wing media for the general election:

The media will go bananas in 3,… 2,…

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is scheduling an Ilhan Omar resolution for Wednesday (full pdf of resolution below) in an attempt to protect her party and cover ongoing, bigoted and sustained antisemitic comments from Muslim freshman representative Ilhan Omar.   However, Pelosi’s attempt to hide the inherent strain of anti-Jewish sentiment throughout her party is likely to fail.
Quite simply, Speaker Pelosi and her House leadership are once again putting their fingers in the cracks of a crumbling wall holding back the far-left hatred for Jews growing amid their base each year.

To further Pelosi’s anxiety, Ms. Omar has full-throated support from fellow freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI), the first Palestinian-American congresswoman, and the celeb progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y) who compares Omar’s attacks against Jewish people to the demands made by “civil rights icons” of years past.
There’s an ideological baseline here that cannot be overcome simply by putting political resolutions on the floor while Omar, Tlaib and AOC express their underlying desire for their preferred ‘final solution‘, to see the nation state of Israel destroyed.  Apparently they too have a dream…
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White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has been a core member of the U.S. trade team providing a brutally honest perspective toward how specific trade engagements can directly benefit the U.S. economy and U.S. worker.
Navarro has gained a reputation as a trade hawk, specifically as it relates to confronting the one-sided trade schemes of China.  However, that encapsulation doesn’t accurately reflect Mr. Navarro’s value.
The Big Club hates him.  Yes, Navarro is hated and opposed by all the right people.  He might be rough around the edges, but he fights… for ‘America First‘.
Navarro is unapologetic in openly calling attention to the process where Wall Street, the multinationals (corporations and banks) have gained power and influence over politicians in Washington DC.  Wall Street funnels hundreds-of-millions to Tom Dohohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  Donohue controls an army of K-Street lobbyists who purchase politicians and sell their CoC created legislation.
Specifically because he calls attention to the brutal truth of a corrupt process, he has become the target of attacks from Wall Street’s beneficiaries, the big club and Decepticon senators who take massive campaign bribes from Tom Donohue.
In a recent Op-ed, Peter Navarro highlights how the Trump economic team is delivering on a promise for structural global trade reform that directly benefits the U.S. economy, U.S. workers, and Main Street USA.
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