Former WH strategist, Steve Bannon, appears in DC at a “Clear and Present Danger China” event to discuss China.
The first half of the Bannon’s presentation reflects why he had to leave the white house; reactionary, influenced by media, vulnerable to fake news, and lacking stability.  However, the second half of the video reflects why Mr. Bannon was a valuable strategist.
[Video prompted to 06:26 – just hit play]

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Ex-NFL football player Edawn Coughman, 31 of Buford Georgia owns several pizza and ice-cream restaurants.  When police responded to a 911 call about a suspicious person and break-in they discovered Mr. Coughman had just staged a burglary and vandalism of his own business, including the spray painting of “Monkey”, “MAGA” and Swastikas on the walls.

GEORGIA – […]  “It’s possible he was trying to stage this as a hate crime,” Pihera said. “We don’t know if he was trying to get attention for this. What we do know is, if that witness had not called us and if those officers had not responded as quickly as they did, we would probably be sitting here talking about a completely different crime in which Mr. Coughman would be trying to say he’s a victim.”
[…]  Coughman was arrested and taken to Gwinnett County Jail, charged with false report of a crime, insurance fraud and concealing a license plate. He has since bonded out. Pihera said there is a possibility additional charges will be filed. (read more)

This interview with former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was Friday evening. Mr. Whitaker gave a specific reference point for his expectation of the IG report on the circumstances surrounding the Carter Page FISA:

…”From where I sit, and from what I know, I think it is going to be fairly dramatic, what this investigation is going to show”…

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CTH Research Opinion – Carter Page was irrelevant to the FBI objective.  The FBI/DOJ goal was to get the Steele Dossier into official investigative position so they could investigate.  The dossier claims were the cornerstone to launch the Mueller probe; but the dossier was only a tool for Mueller; not the goal.  The goal for Mueller and team was to generate evidence of obstruction…. which would be used for impeachment.
Or put another way…
To get impeachment, they needed obstruction.  To get obstruction they needed an investigation.  To get the investigation they needed evidence (the dossier). To change the dossier from oppo-research to evidence they needed a target.  The target was Carter Page.
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From the first moment when he announced his intent to run for President of the United States in 2015, Donald Trump was very clear on one specific aspect to his view of why people would vote for him.  As a candidate, he repeated it often:

So the reporter said to me the other day, “But, Mr. Trump, you’re not a nice person. How can you get people to vote for you?”
I said, “I don’t know.” I said, “I think that number one, I am a nice person. I give a lot of money away to charities and other things. I think I’m actually a very nice person.”
But, I said, “This is going to be an election that’s based on competence, because people are tired of these nice people. And they’re tired of being ripped off by everybody in the world.”

President Donald J Trump continues to highlight that message today:

It’s funny, from time-to-time people ask “how is CTH consistently able to predict what Donald Trump will do about a complex issue”?  In reality the answer is simple, go back and re-read his hour long campaign kick-off speech. [See Here]
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National security attorney Bradley Moss and former assistant attorney general John Yoo appear on Fox News to discuss the issues around a constructed Russian conspiracy; a politically corrupt special counsel; the pending IG report on possible FISA abuse; and the ongoing predicate review by U.S. Attorney John Durham.

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Former congressman Trey Gowdy warns everyone to tamp down expectations from the IG report on FISA abuse. One point of focus from Horowitz’s letter today is that he *only* looked at the singular FISA issues surrounding Carter Page, nothing more.

…”Relating to a certain U.S. person.”

Therefore if Carter Page was not a victim; meaning if Carter Page was an active participant (mole) in the FBI operation – willing to be the vehicle by which the Steele Dossier could be injected into the investigation; then there will likely be no criminal conduct outlined by Horowitz.  The head of the tick-tock club was not happy with this possibility.

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The recession-hoping pundits took more blows to their remaining credibility today when both the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) deliver excellent economic results from August that continue to exceed MSM expectations.
The Commerce Dept. announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlights retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year.   These excellent results come on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.

The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July, when Amazon held its two-day, blowout Prime Day sale. (link)

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In a quiet admission of food dependency, China purchased 600,000 tonnes of soybeans yesterday (link), and simultaneously announced that U.S. pork and soybean imports would be exempt from further tariff increases.
The surface message Beijing is selling, surrounds their magnanimous panda narrative of reaching out to diminish trade friction.  However, below the surface everyone knows China cannot feed itself,and if food prices keep rising they could likely have growing unrest.

Beijing’s decision to not enhance tariffs of pork and soybeans is very self serving; particularly because China owns Smithfield foods, the largest producer of U.S. pork.  In essence China has lessened tariffs against their own company.

(SCMP) China has announced that it will exclude imports of US soybeans, pork and other farm goods from additional trade war tariffs, opening the door for significant purchases of agricultural products.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday that China’s National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce made the exemption in response to the US’ decision of postpone an increase in the tariff rate on $250 billion of Chinese goods from October 1 to October 15.

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The DOJ Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz has notified congress that his investigation is complete.  In a letter to congressional committee members with oversight authority, IG Horowitz states the draft report on his FISA abuse investigation is currently undergoing an internal classification review:
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When the reports of a possible indictment for Andrew McCabe surfaced, we noted it would be interesting to see how the Lawfare alliance responds. Today we can see that response.
Andrew McCabe’s defense attorney, Michael Bromwich (also the attorney for ‘beach friend’ Christine Blasey-Ford in the Kavanaugh narrative), leaks his communication with U.S. Attorney for DC, Jessie Liu, to the New York Times.

Leaks to the NYT and WaPo are how the Lawfare alliance push their narrative.  These are the same DOJ/FBI officials who leaked to the same media when constructing the Russian Conspiracy narrative around the Trump campaign.  [Same exact people]

(NYT) […] In a letter sent late on Thursday, defense lawyers asked whether a grand jury had considered charges against Mr. McCabe, who is being investigated over whether he lied to internal investigators about interactions with news media. The letter came shortly after the Justice Department told Mr. McCabe’s lawyers that it had rejected their pitch to the deputy attorney general to drop the case.

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