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President Donald Trump announced Thursday roughly $250 billion in deals between American businesses and China. On his final day in Beijing, Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping oversaw a ceremony in which corporate giants such as Boeing and Qualcomm signed multibillion-dollar deals. “This is truly a miracle,” China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said at a news briefing in Beijing. Trump said Thursday he was looking forward to a change in the U.S.-China relationship. “Discussing trade … knowing that the United States really has to change its policies because they’ve gotten so far behind on trade with China and frankly with...

The U.S.’s ranks of diplomats are losing key leaders at a “dizzying speed” as the State Department struggles to recruit talent amid a hiring freeze and sinking morale in the Trump administration, according to a new letter from a top ambassador. Sixty percent of the agency’s career ambassadors, the highest rank for diplomats, have retired or quit since January. Nearly half of career ministers — the next level down and equivalent to the military’s three-star generals — are gone too, down to 19 from 33. The next-level minister counselors have seen their numbers drop by 62 diplomats since Labor Day...

See link in body of thread.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday wrote a letter to all 32 league owners regarding the protests that have taken place during the national anthem, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported. In the letter, which Schefter shared on his Facebook page, Goodell wrote that the “current dispute over the National Anthem is threatening to erode the unifying power of our game, and is now dividing us, and our players, from many fans across the country.” Last year, former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat down and later took a knee during the playing of the national anthem as protest against racial injustice....

HAMBURG — President Trump and other world leaders on Saturday emerged from two days of talks unable to resolve key differences on core issues like climate change and globalization, fueling worries that global summits may be ineffective in the Trump era. The divisions at the G-20 summit were most bitter on climate change, where 19 leaders formed a unified front against Trump. But even in areas of nominal compromise like trade, top European leaders said they have little faith that an agreement forged today could hold tomorrow. “Our world has never been so divided,” French President Emmanuel Macron said as...

Germany has ‘massively weakened’ its climate action plan for next week’s G20 summit in Hamburg in order to appease Donald Trump. According to a shocked report in the green, EU-linked propaganda outlet Climate Change News this represents a disastrous cultural surrender which “….shows the degree to which the German presidency has bent to the will of the Trump White House.” In public, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has been talking tough on climate change, promising to put it at the forefront of the G20 summit and making none-too-subtle swipes ........

When I ponder the fate of my soul, I am given pause in celebrating the misfortunes of my antagonists, aka indulging in schadenfreude. But then, something comes along that is just irresistible, and I have to share it with our readers. On Last night’s installment of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Mark Steyn and Tucker traded quips at the expense of CNN. Steyn’s characteristic riffs and flights of fancy are in full evidence. I only ask that readers make an informed decision before indulging in this video. I am not proud of enjoying this so much.

The image of the United States has deteriorated sharply across the globe under President Donald Trump and an overwhelming majority of people in other countries have no confidence in his ability to lead, a survey from the Pew Research Center showed.Five months into Trump's presidency, the survey spanning 37 nations showed U.S. favorability ratings in the rest of the world slumping to 49 percent from 64 percent at the end of Barack Obama's eight years in the White House.

After leading the House Democrats for 15 years, the San Francisco stalwart has total control of her caucus and is a massive fundraising force that her party cannot easily replace. And as the first female Speaker of the House (2007-2011), she has unique status and an array of female supporters, both inside and outside Congress. Willie Brown, the first African-American mayor from Pelosi's hometown, cautions in his latest column in the San Francisco Chronicle that those who want to replace Pelosi should be "careful what you ask for. You might wind up with even less."

Another day, another terrible review for NBC News talent Megyn Kelly in the establishment media. The Boston Globe’s television critic Matthew Gilbert ripped Kelly for lacking both the charisma and acumen to be successful at NBC News. After watching the first three poorly-rated episodes of Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, he notes that charisma is a “relatively hard quality to define” and points out that “Merriam-Webster actually resorts to the supernatural in its first definition of the word: ‘A personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure.’” “All I know is that I don’t...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is losing support left and...left.More Democrats are beginning to distance themselves from the House leader as the party continues to lose winnable elections, like Tuesday night's special election in Georgia. Despite outspending his opponent Karen Handel, Democrat Jon Ossoff suffered defeat - making it 4-0 for Republicans in special election races since Donald Trump became president.South Carolina Democratic House candidate Joe Cunningham, who is running to unseat Rep. Mark Sanford (R), has had enough. Change, he says, needs to come at the top. The Democratic Party needs new leadership now. If elected, I will not...

US added 211,000 jobs in April, unemployment rate fell to 10-year low of 4.4 percent.

Complete Headline: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to STEP DOWN after his anti-Trump vow to hire 10,000 refugees backfired, provoked a boycott by Donald supporters and hit sales. Howard Schultz, the current CEO of Starbucks, is weeks away from stepping down from his role at the giant coffee chain next month. The move, which was announced in December of last year, comes after his vow to hire thousands refugees in response to President Donald Trump's first travel ban appeared to hurt customer sentiment and dent their sales. Trump supporters have called for a boycott of the chain since January 29, when...

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will never admit it, the 2015 Paris climate treaty Canada signed with great fanfare died last week.It died because of the release of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget plan.While Trump has to get it through the U.S. Congress, which means parts of it are unlikely to survive, his clear intention to gut U.S. climate change policy by dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency spells the death knell for the Paris treaty.Trump is proposing deeper cuts to the EPA than any other government agency, reducing its $8.2 billion budget by 31%, laying off 19% of its...

A CIA employee who contributed thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and who is a registered Democrat announced his decision to leave the agency in a Washington Post column published Sunday, writing that his departure "had nothing to do with politics." Edward Price resigned from the CIA last week and used the Washington Post to explain his decision that he could not "in good faith serve this administration as an intelligence professional." Price wrote that his "decision had nothing to do with politics," and that he "would have been proud to again work under a Republican administration." "As...

Winning and historic with VP Pence casting tie breaking vote. Now let's get that public school swamp cleaned up and stop the brain washing and indoctrination of the kids.

Tea Party founder and conservative billionaire Charles Koch has attacked Donald Trump's controversial travel ban, branding it as 'authoritarian'. Koch said he will oppose the billionaire president if and when he deviates from a commitment to 'free and open societies'. Commenting on the travel ban controversy, he said: '[The] travel ban is the wrong approach and will likely be counterproductive.'

This is a jaw-dropping exhibition of the scope of President Trump’s strategic leverage. Remember how Secretary of State Rex Tillerson refused to take the bait from Senator Marco Rubio regarding Saudi Arabia? Put this outcome in the dividend column. Those who have not followed the back-story of non-extremist politics in the middle-east will miss the obvious play identified more readily by those who have followed closely. One of the major influences and advisers for King Salman of Saudi Arabia is Egyptian President Fattah Abdel el-Sisi. El-Sisi has already established a productive relationship with President Trump both before and after the...

The Trump administration has frozen Obama’s parting gift to the the Palestinians. Former US President Barack Obama, in his waning hours, quietly released $221 million to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which Congress had been blocking. The Trump administration announced it is freezing the move. The State Department is reviewing the last-minute decision by former Secretary of State John Kerry to send $221 million dollars to the Palestinians. Kerry formally notified Congress that State would release the money Friday morning, just hours before President Donald Trump took the oath of office. The funds — supposedly intended for reconstruction in Gaza and...

When President-elect Donald Trump replaces Barack Obama on January 20, the Democratic Party will find itself more removed from power than at almost any point since the party’s creation. Scorned by the same voters who once embraced the New Deal, built the Great Society, and put their hope in the nation’s first black president, Democrats are now locked out of power in Washington and out of two-thirds of state legislative chambers across the country...