PHASE II – President Trump tweeted earlier today about the ongoing geopolitical contest that is priority #1 in defending U.S. interests and retaining our economic strength.
Do not be surprised if North Korea launches another provocative missile test soon. Watch China, not N.Korea. It’s Chairman Xi’s people in the DPRK who are taking action. Kim Jong-Un is an expendable proxy regime. The war is the U.S. -vs- China trade and economic confrontation. North Korea is the Potemkin backdrop for the Beijing puppeteer.

(LINK)

As POTUS Trump and the U.S. trade team target ever increasing tariff pressure upon Beijing to change their behavior, keep a close eye on North Korea. Given the zero-sum approach of the Chinese; and their history of weaponizing the DPRK; we could expect to see Beijing roll out nuclear antagonism again in an overt effort to gain concessions.
(more…)

A new release from the FBI Vault on the Hillary Clinton email investigation reveals the Anthony Weiner/Huma Abedin laptop containing Clinton emails (350,000) and Blackberry communications (344,000) was never reviewed for intrusion prior to the 2016 election.

Here’s how we discover. However, first, the frustrating context:

From the Boston Marathon bombing investigation through the San Bernardino terrorist attack; passing the Garland, Texas cartoon terror shooting; and continuing through Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub; and then through the Parkland shooting and into Las Vegas -via the Mandalay Bay- we always knew something was wrong with the apparatus, the institutional apparatus, of the FBI… but it wasn’t until 2017 with James Comey, Andrew McCabe and the transparently corrupt Clinton exoneration and candidate Trump set-up scheme that we fully grasped the scale and scope of the corruption.
It is disconcerting to accept that the institution of the FBI is corrupt, soup-to-nuts, including every aforementioned field office and participant therein.  But reality doesn’t care about feelings; it just stares you in the face until we accept it.
Talking heads always approach the issue with a co-dependent and enabling qualifier: “we’re not talking about the field agents”, they say.  Um, no; that’s nonsense.  If the institution is corrupt, then every entity within it is corrupt – until such time as the corruption is removed.
Enter FBI Director Christopher Wray…
FBI Director Wray seems like an affable person who is, by all reasonable evaluations, entirely way-over-his-head in dealing with the systemic rot, cancer and corruption.
Sound harsh?  Go back and WATCH the post IG report (Clinton email investigation) press conference; it’s not harsh.   It takes a particular kind of corruption manager to stand in front of a national audience and tell the world there was no bias in the Clinton email investigation… yet, he’s going to put every employee of the FBI through “bias training”?
Yeah, un huh.
No bias… but everyone needs bias training.  Gotcha.
Perhaps a more nonsensical statement was declared somewhere…. but I couldn’t remember one… until…. well, until the same DOJ/FBI released the FISA application constructed by the institution of the FBI.  This is where we read:
(more…)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the July 2018 employment report today (full pdf with tables below) highlighting continued growth in jobs.  Overall private employment gained 170,000 jobs, while government employment decreased 13,000 jobs for a net gain of 156,000 new jobs.   The BLS unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%.
[*Note this footnote:  “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised up to +268,000, and the change for June was revised up to +248,000. With these revisions, employment gains in May and June combined were 59,000 more than previously reported.”]  Huh, funny that…. some revision eh?
July’s labor participation is holding steady at 62.9%, with 155,965,000 employed within the U.S. workforce. (Table A-1)
Blue and White-collar Main Street jobs continue to lead the MAGAnomic resurgence. (table B-1) Construction jobs increased 19,000 jobs; manufacturing gained 37,000 jobs; and trade/transportation and utilities gaining 15,000.
With extra cash in their pockets, the U.S. worker/consumer continued to spend and retail employment added 7,100 new workers in July.   (Table B1) Interestingly, and reinforcing a long-ago CTH prediction, the consumer spending growth (leading to increases in employment) is specifically in the consumable goods sector (food, clothing, etc.).   This is connected to the increase in work-time (table B2); an oft overlooked aspect to the economy.
Truck transportation gained 4,400 jobs in July (everyone needs truckers), which is in line with the high wage growth (3.4%) within this sub-set of the transportation industry.

(more…)

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appears on Fox News this morning to discuss Phase II in the economic confrontation with China.  The hurt will increase until behavior changes.
Phase II is direct, deliberate and fully confrontational trade engagement with extreme prejudice to financially hurt the Chinese economy and present the communist regime with examples of what will lie ahead if they do not concede to U.S. terms.
The first objective in Phase II is to convince the Chinese the war is real.  Beijing cannot yet fathom the United States is not going to allow the import of low cost manufactured goods…. they believe, wrongly, against a history with all previous administrations, that President Trump is bluffing.

When I first saw this late last night, the severity of the vulgar racism expressed within the details made me pause… it couldn’t possibly be real.  Alas, it is real.
Stunningly, it is real.
Sarah Jeong is a writer of some sort who was hired by the New York Times to become an editor for their publication.   However, apparently someone on Twitter had encountered Ms. Jeong’s expressed ideology, and shared the content of the new editor’s twitter feed.
To say Ms. Jeong is a severe racist would be an understatement.  The level of racial anger, racial bitterness, race-based vulgarity, and expressed racial hatred is so over-the-top it seems the New York Times must be intent on creating some form of publicity from their decision to hire.
There is no-way a business could/would ever ACCIDENTALLY hire a person who has expressed such vitriolic hatred when their role and responsibility within the organization would be to promote the editorial perspective of the New York Times.  Meaning the New York Times supports and condones this type of overt racism.
A small sample of Ms. Sarah Joeng’s racial perspective is below.
(more…)

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Devin Nunes appears on Fox News with Tucker Carlson to discuss the redactions within the Carter Page FISA application. About two-thirds of the way through the interview Nunes describes the document as “a phoney FISA“, moments later “a completely fraudulent document“… WATCH:

In June and July last year it became obvious President Trump was going to initiate a full-frontal geopolitical confrontation with China based on their ambitions for economic conquest.  We labeled the confrontation: Eagle -vs- Red Dragon.
Specifically around: intellectual property theft; massive U.S. trade imbalances; imposed tariffs, and ridiculous non-tariff barriers put in place by China, we anticipated the conflict would eventually force Beijing to drop the Panda mask and expose their economic intentions.  Additionally there was clarity within President Trump’s approach for any observer who was willing to accept the history of Mr. Trump’s views on the larger issues. In short, POTUS Trump will not back down.
In March of 2018 U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer completed a section 301 review of China’s trade practices.  [SEE HERE] Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 authorizes the President to take all appropriate action, including retaliation, to obtain the removal of any act, policy, or practice of a foreign government that violates an international trade agreement or is unjustified, unreasonable, or discriminatory, and that burdens or restricts U.S. commerce.  However, as talks with China progressed, President Trump shelved the 301 action to see where negotiations would end-up.
Due to the severity of communist ideology, and the intransigence of China to make any modification to their global economic plans, Chairman Xi Jinping made the strategic decision to elevate the confrontation in full Red Dragon mode.  The May and June, 2018, negotiations between the U.S. and China provided no progress.  The 301 review of China is now pulled back off the shelf, and President Trump assembles his trade-war strategy:
(more…)

Social media lit up upon seeing a carefully crafted CNN article outlining that sometime in “the spring” of 2018 team Mueller referred democrat lobbyist Tony Podesta, former Minnesota Republican Rep. Vin Weber, and former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig to the Southern District of New York. A cursory review indicates many people are looking at this story with an eye toward a possible prosecution…. But not so fast.
In the aggregate CNN supports the political objectives of the Mueller team; and CNN has invested millions in selling the anti-Trump ‘Russian Conspiracy’ narrative.

When you read the article closely, with eyes wide open, a more reasonable takeaway -based on the historic pattern- is that CNN is attempting to protect Robert Mueller and frame his highly-political legal team as bi-partisan in their investigative endeavors.
President Trump has focused a great deal of sunlight on the one-sided approach of Team Mueller; and a majority portion of the U.S. electorate now see the Mueller investigation for what it is, a political ‘witchhunt’.
Against the backdrop of a trial against Paul Manafort beginning; which is an in-your-face contrast to how his business partner Tony Podesta has been handled; only amplifies the one-sided-nature of the Mueller team’s collective intention.
Enter CNN, for a necessary assist.
(more…)

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes told Maria Bartiromo today that the American public will be “shocked” when/if we see the remaining blacked out portions of the FBI’s FISA Title-1 Surveillance Application against Carter Page.
The House Intelligence, Judiciary and Oversight committees have requested that President Trump declassify 21 additional pages from the FISA application. Additionally, Chairman Nunes states congress will be conducting depositions during the August recess:

During part of a Face The Nation interview earlier today President Trump’s attorney innocuously dropped a bombshell revelation that Michael Cohen recorded hundreds of conversations, including dozens of interviews with journalists and reporters.
Some of those recordings between Cohen and journalists were recently passed along to Mr. Giuliani because the subject of them was his client, President Donald Trump.

Let that sink in.
President Trump has recordings, at least a dozen, of reporters discussing him, and their reporting/opinion of him, with Michael Cohen.
Apparently Michael Cohen recorded dozens of interviews with journalists about candidate Donald Trump, and President-elect Donald Trump, and President Donald Trump. Michael Cohen hated the Trump campaign; he made his opinion of the campaign abundantly clear. The media hate anything Trump etc. Now imagine what’s on those recordings…. The journalists did not know they were being recorded.
(more…)