The plague, also known as “the Black Death” killed somewhere between 75 and 200 million people as a result of international trade, commerce and transnational shipping. The disease was thought to be spread by fleas and parasites carried by rats.  The global population took over 400 years to recover.

Deadly Arizona Parasites

ARIZONA – Officials in two Arizona counties are warning the public after fleas in the region tested positive for the plague, the infamous infectious disease that killed millions during the Middle Ages.
Navajo County Public Health officials confirmed on Friday that fleas in the area have tested positive for the rare disease. The public health warning follows a similar notice from Coconino County Public Health Services District in Arizona warning of the presence of plague in fleas found there too.
Both counties are situated in the northern part of Arizona.

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It must be weird for the ordinary person around the world to view U.S. politics through the prism of the American MSM lügenpresse.  We’re often left wondering if international observers realize how much deception and fraud exists in media broadcasts of President Trump.
However, that said, a few days ago CTH predicted via twitter that Friday would bring a “breaking news” revelation that President Trump’s administration had been in ongoing negotiations with North Korea.  Today, exactly that happened.

(Via ABC) Despite the bombastic rhetoric exchanged between North Korean and American leaders this week, the Trump administration has been quietly engaged in back-channel diplomacy with North Korea for several months, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.
The ongoing talks, which were first reported by The Associated Press, included discussions about U.S.-North Korean relations and Americans imprisoned in North Korea, the source said.

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As surprising as it seems, the U.S. State Department never checked the ‘.gov’ accounts of key Hillary Clinton aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan in the initial search to fill the FIOA request filed by Judicial Watch for communication over Benghazi.  Yea, go figure…

(Via Judicial Watch) […] District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered the State Department “to search the state.gov e-mail accounts of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Jacob Sullivan,” former aides of Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State. The State Department is ordered to search in those accounts “for records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] March 4, 2015, FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request.” (A separate Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit first broke open the Clinton email scandal.)

[I]f an e-mail did not involve any state.gov user, the message would have passed through only the Secretary’s private server and, therefore, would be beyond the immediate reach of State. Because of this circumstance, unlike the ordinary case, State could not look solely to its own records systems to adequately respond to [Judicial Watch’s] demand.

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When candidate Donald Trump first proposed renegotiating NAFTA back in 2015 everyone was stunned. Fixing bad trade deals had never been proposed by any candidate. Candidate Trump also proposed a border wall.  Those two policy initiatives are entirely connected. Almost immediately the government of Mexico realized the potential impact and threatened to use illegal migration if NAFTA was reopened.
Well, Trump won the presidency.  The crony capitalists/lobbyists in DC (U.S. Chamber of Commerce – Tom Donohue) are freaking out. Congress was notified of the intent to renegotiate NAFTA.  Mexico and Canada were notified. Commerce Secretary Ross, U.S.T.R Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin are ready to begin next week (Wed).
President Trump and Secretary Ross have already announced they will try to renegotiate NAFTA on a trilateral basis (U.S., Canada and Mexico). However, if it doesn’t work, they’ll scrap the 3-way NAFTA and go one-on-one with individual bilateral agreements.

Today Mexico’s Economic Minister Ildefonso Guajardo threatens to flood the U.S. with South American illegal aliens, criminals and gang members as leverage to keep exploiting NAFTA.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico could pull back on cooperation in migration and security matters if the United States walks away from talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Mexican economy minister said in a newspaper report published on Thursday.

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When we initially read this article yesterday our review began with an earnest and sincere effort to understand the concerns amid the career bureaucrats in the U.S. State Department; and also to understand the overall cultural climate that would need Secretary Tillerson’s Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to calm these officials….

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The No. 2 U.S. diplomat on Tuesday sought to allay concerns among the State Department’s rank-and-file employees over possible layoffs and perceptions of a lack of firm direction under the administration of President Donald Trump. (more)

…After all, this has to be about the eleventyth time either Secretary Tillerson or Deputy Sullivan has addressed these ‘climate assessment’ issues. It was less than a week prior to this latest effort by Sullivan when Tillerson himself was talking to the department.
I mean seriously, how much “talking to‘ could one organization need? These are obviously some seriously needy people. Then again, we’ve long discussed the overall liberal perspectives within the department; so the most entrenched liberalism inside government is definitively inside the Department of State.
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Apparently CTH and Asian expert Gordon Chang are on the same intellectual page in analysis of the ongoing North Korea issues.  In this interview Mr. Chang outlines the dynamic between U.S. President Trump, North Korean President Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Gordon Chang also agrees that mounting economic pressure on China will be the pathway to getting the DPRK into line.

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The North Korean commentariat today has all been centered around a “response” to a precipitous strike by the United States. As previously outlined by Secretary Tillerson, via the “four no’s”, and backed up by the entire U.S. policy team, there is no intent on the U.S. to initiate a North Korean regime change. That leverage approach is China’s to utilize; while we hold China accountable.
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State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert delivers the press briefing for August 9th, 2017.  The insufferable media gnats remain fixated on President Trump’s remarks about North Korea – remarks, combined with months of created leverage, that are actually delivering results.
After ignoring all of the action President Trump, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mnuchin, and Secretary Ross have taken to shape the geography; and without even seeing the leverage Trump has positioned on China, Russia and North Korea; the pool reporters are floating questions from a parallel universe called ‘bizarro world’.
Seriously, questions about possibly needing a new “diplomatic direction” are ridiculous against the backdrop of the greatest international diplomatic win in years happening only a few days ago with the 15-0 UNSC unanimous vote on North Korea sanctions.
U.S. journalists are embarrassing.

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[Transcript will be added later]
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During a Monday Rotary Club meeting in Kentucky senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took questions from audience members who asked McConnell to explain why Republican lawmakers have been unable to deliver major legislative accomplishments for the president.
Senator McConnell responded by saying President Trump’s expectations are too high.

“I’d ask for a show of hands, but I know everybody’s saying, ‘been there, haven’t done anything,’ which I find extremely irritating — and I’m going to tell you why. A Congress goes on for two years. Part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven’t done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things need to be done by a certain point.”
“Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before, and I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the Democratic process.”

Fortunately, this ridiculously elitist and arrogant establishment tone will likely not play well. This, along with a host of other ridiculous comments and realities could doom Luther Strange in the upcoming Alabama special election. Luther Strange is the loyal Decepticon favorite of Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove.  Mo Brooks and Roy Moore are more aligned with President Trump.
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We’ll see.  The red dragon has a tendency to say one thing publicly and manipulate another thing privately.  However, the baseline for China to take the role of Big Panda is the reception of Secretary Rex Tillerson’s “Four No” remarks on North Korea during his State Department briefing.

TILLERSON”S FOUR NO’S: The United States does not seek •regime change, •the collapse of the regime, •an accelerated reunification of the peninsula or •an excuse to send the U.S. military into North Korea.

So long as the ‘four-no’s’ remain visible and discussed in the international dialogue, the options for China are to comply or to be called out as a deceiving enabler.  The economic consequences for China to break the sanctions are looming and severely consequential.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will pay the biggest price from the new United Nations sanctions against North Korea because of its close economic relationship with the country, but will always enforce the resolutions, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
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Following his reelection victory in 2012 President Obama removed the bidding process from section 8 housing; instead Obama’s HUD initiated grants to their hand-selected organizations.  After years of lost lawsuits the HUD bidding process is set to return.
WASHINGTON DC – […] Section 8 housing is a federal program that pays rental assistance to landlords to help low-income people acquire affordable housing.
Because HUD had problems administering the program, in 1995 it started to contract out the management of Section 8 housing units through a competitive bidding process. However, in March of 2012, HUD suddenly shifted away from the competitive bidding process, and began using funding mechanisms which were more like grants.
Contractors who had previously gained HUD’s business under the bidding process appealed to the Government Accountability Office in 2012, just months after HUD changed course. And by August of that year, the GAO ruled that HUD’s actions were “unreasonable and in disregard of applicable statutory guidance.”
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