Sad Panda increasingly frustrated as disruptor Trump heaps vociferous praise on Chairman Xi, while simultaneously out maneuvering Beijing’s geopolitical economic strategy.
China expert Michael Pillsbury discusses the current environment around the Beijing leadership with Fox host Tucker Carlson.  This is really important. WATCH:

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What Pillsbury outlines is exactly what CTH predicted last year when we shared how the Red Dragon would be caught entirely off-guard.  They’ve never seen this approach before.
NOTE: The upcoming Chinese trade delegation is not showing up at the end of this month as a matter of scheduling happenstance.  What no-one in the financial/trade/economic media is connecting is the timing of their visit with USTR Lighthizers’ Section 301 Tariff hearings –SEE HERE.  August 20th through August 27th, you can guarantee the Chinese delegations will be all over those hearings; including dispatching their paid lobbyists to provide input on their behalf.
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The Associated Press published an interview with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr today where the intensely corrupt Senator Burr tries to reverse all his prior positions, publications and manipulated committee findings, against President Trump.

“Sorry bro, gotta bail”…

As the tide changes; and with DOJ and FBI officials delivering testimony; combined with communication between U.S. co-conspirators (Bruce Ohr, Glenn Simpson) and foreign actors (Chris Steele, Oleg Deripaska) gaining sunlight, the larger united effort between the intelligence apparatus and politicians starts to become a risk to elected individuals.
Remember, the background here is: currently indicted Senate Intelligence Committee Security Chief, James Wolfe, through his lawyers, having already stated they intend to subpoena Intel Committee members as part of Wolfe’s defense for leaking classified information to the media and lying to the FBI.

(AP) […]  Burr said there is “no factual evidence today that we’ve received” on collusion or conspiracy between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign. But he said he’s still open on the issue and hasn’t personally come to any final conclusions, since the investigation isn’t finished.

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Freight hauling trucks are like the lymphatic system within a healthy economy.  As the economy writ large needs to move stuff around, it’s the truckers who git-r-done; and no time in U.S. economic history has there been such a demand for haulers.
In a stunning Wall Street Journal Report they note Analyst group ACT Research says manufacturers are on track for 450,000 orders for heavy-duty trucks this year, easily breaking a 14-year-old record. In July alone, North American fleets ordered more than 52,000 trucks, the largest order in history.   Whoot, Whoot !!

(Via WSJ) An unprecedented run of orders for big rigs has pushed the backlog at truck factories to nine months, according to industry analysts, the largest since early 2006, when truckers stocked up to get vehicles in place before tougher environmental restrictions would take effect. Typically the backlog is about five months for the truck industry’s manufacturers, analysts said.

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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%.  However, in the second quarter of 2018 productivity jumped to 2.9%.  That means total business output increased significantly as more product was demanded from within the business operation.  Throughout the economy people just wanted more stuff.
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The future’s so bright…

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The media institutions that are the central players in advancement of the two-year-long corrupt scheme against candidate Trump, now President Trump, all listed themselves as a “Media Coalition” on court documents demanding the names and addresses of the Manafort Jury:

Fortunately, Judge T.S. Ellis denied the motion by the media.
Shortly before 3:00pm this afternoon Judge Ellis said he personally had received threats and would keep the names of jurors a secret for their safety despite the media demand their names be made public.
The judge is being protected full time by the U.S. Marshals and shared with the court: “I won’t tell you what threats I’ve received,” he said, “but I have the Marshals’ protection. Where I go, they go. I had no idea this case would excite these emotions,” the judge said.
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Departing the White House for New York and New Jersey, President Trump delivers impromptu remarks and holds a brief unscheduled presser prior to climbing aboard Marine-One.

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Is that distant whistling sound from the fins of an atomic truth bomb inbound from President Trump’s tweets?

Catherine Herridge report available here. In the past several days the name Oleg Deripaska has resurfaced, this time with some more attention.  Oleg Deripaska, is a Russian billionaire and is likely much more of a central figure than previously discussed.
Byron York previously outlined new documents showing the communication between Trump Dossier author Christopher Steele and DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
Within the early 2016 discussions, Chris Steele appeared to be advocating to Bruce Ohr on behalf of Oleg Deripaska who was banned from travel into the U.S. by the State Department.

(Byron York) Emails in 2016 between former British spy Christopher Steele and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr suggest Steele was deeply concerned about the legal status of a Putin-linked Russian oligarch, and at times seemed to be advocating on the oligarch’s behalf, in the same time period Steele worked on collecting the Russia-related allegations against Donald Trump that came to be known as the Trump dossier. The emails show Steele and Ohr were in frequent contact, that they intermingled talk about Steele’s research and the oligarch’s affairs, and that Glenn Simpson, head of the dirt-digging group Fusion GPS that hired Steele to compile the dossier, was also part of the ongoing conversation. (more)

I strongly urge you to read the York article because I’m going to expand on the Deripaska angle from the context of the reader understanding the relationship.
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The U.S. Dept of Justice detained ISIS fighter Omar Ameen in Sacramento, California, yesterday (full pdf below) pending extradition back to Iraq on murder charges.  Incredibly Ameen gained State Department entry into the U.S. through the refugee system.
Despite the claims of the Obama administration, Omar Ameen’s ability to enter the United States is a clear example of weaknesses within the refugee process and lies told by former administration officials about the security therein.
From the DOJ memo of extradition, Omar Ameen first applied for refugee status in Turkey in 2012.  Then in June of 2014 applied for refugee status to the United States.  The extradition memo explains that “based on the written and verbal answers given by Ameen, his refugee application was approved by USCIS on June 5, 2014.”
On June 21st, 2014, Ameen, who claimed to work as a truck driver, murdered police officer Ihsan Abdulhafiz Jasim in Rawah, Iraq, an ISIS stronghold.  Four months later, November 4th, 2014, Ameen entered the U.S. settling in Salt Lake City and then later traveling to Sacramento, California, where he was arrested.
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Earlier today Secretary of State Mike Pompeo introduced the newest geopolitical strategy from the U.S. Department of State, the Iran Action Group.  The goal of the coordinated effort is to assemble a unified action front from all allies toward the destabilizing activity stemming from within the Iranian regime.

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[Transcript] SECRETARY POMPEO: Good afternoon, everyone. Today I am happy to announce the creation of the Iran Action Group.
The Iran Action Group will be responsible for directing, reviewing, and coordinating all aspects of the State Department’s Iran-related activity, and it will report directly to me.
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