China controls North Korea; essentially as a proxy province.  As a result Beijing controls the messaging from the DPRK.  Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping is the captor and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un is the captive – it’s essentially a hostage dynamic.  The historic objective has been to use DPRK aggression as a hedge against the west.
Predictably there was going to come a moment when Chairman Xi realized the trade negotiations by his adversary, President Trump, were a hall of mirrors.  The U.S. President has played China by using their own panda-mask strategy against them.

President Trump achieved his goal when no-one was paying attention. The goal was a decoupling from China on economic terms.  Strategic decoupling has been underway for over a year.   There is no actual intent to reach a trade deal with China where the U.S. drops the tariffs and returns to holding hands with a happy panda playing by new rules. This fictional narrative is a figment of fantasy being sold by a financial media that cannot fathom a U.S. President would be so bold as to just walk away from China.
For almost three years U.S. President Trump has been working on two connected objectives: (1) removing the threat posed by North Korea by severing the ability of Beijing to use the proxy province as a weapon (Kim is hostage to China); and (2) deconstructing the growing economic influence of China.
Both issues are directly connected to U.S. national security; and both issues are being approached by President Trump through the use of economic leverage to achieve national security results.
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President Trump responds to today’s deadline set by House Democrats for the White House to say whether it would participate in the impeachment proceedings:

In summary:

“Nuts!”

Following a possible terrorist shooting early this morning at Pensacola Naval Air Station, six Saudi nationals have been arrested.  Three of them were reported to have been filming the shooting. The shooter was armed with a handgun and was killed by sheriff’s deputies responding to the dawn incident at NAS Pensacola.

(Via Daily Mail) – Six Saudi nationals have been arrested after an Air Force trainee – also from Saudi Arabia – opened fire at a naval base in Florida, killing three people and injuring eight.
The men were detained near the scene of the shooting, which took place at Naval Air Station in Pensacola early Friday morning. It is currently unclear why they have been taken into custody.
Three of the six Saudis were seen filming the entire incident as it unfolded, a source told The New York Times on Friday evening.

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Following a visit to Mexico by U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, earlier today President Trump announced he was putting a “temporary hold” on the designation of Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

It looks like President Donald Trump has once again created a significant amount of leverage for Mexican President Lopez-Obrador to continue working with the Trump administration on a variety of security (border and immigration) and economic (USMCA) aspects.
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Shortly after 6pm this evening Supreme Court Justice Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a prior 2nd Circuit ruling on hold until next Friday, December 13, at 5 p.m.

President Trump went to the Supreme Court after the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capital One seeking President Trump’s tax records. In his request to the court [Read Here] Trump asked SCOTUS to block the subpoenas on the ground they go beyond the committees’ powers.
Justice Ginsburg’s order tonight gives the justices time to rule on Trump’s request for a longer stay of the lower court’s decision while he files a petition for review. Ginsburg ordered the House of Representatives to file a response to Trump’s request by 11 a.m. on Wednesday, December 11.
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Earlier today President Trump hosted a small business roundtable at the White House with various business owners to discuss the economy and the removal of regulatory hurdles. [Video and Transcript Below]

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[Transcript] – THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, everyone. King Salman of Saudi Arabia, he just called to express his sincere condolences and give his sympathies to the families and friends of the warriors who were killed and wounded in the attack that took place just recently, just this morning, in Pensacola, Florida.
The King said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter and that this person, in no way, shape, or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people so much.
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Elections have consequences.  On the same day the U.S. economy reports astoundingly successful jobs growth of 266,000 jobs and a drop in the unemployment rate to 3.5 percent; the Canadian state economic minister reports surprisingly terrible jobs losses of 72,200 jobs and a jump in unemployment from 5.5 to 5.9 percent.
The Canadian economy is roughly one-tenth the size of the U.S. So in equivalent terms the results from Canada reflect a comparative loss of 720,000 jobs on the same day the U.S. revises all figures upward to over 300,000 gains.  A stunning economic contrast:

OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Canadian job market lost a surprise 71,200 net positions in November while the unemployment rate rose to 5.9%, the highest in more than a year, data showed on Friday, as analysts said a repeat of the weak numbers could force the Bank of Canada to rethink its monetary policy.
Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a gain of 10,000 jobs and had predicted the unemployment rate would hold steady at 5.5%. […] November’s numbers followed a weak report in October, when the labor market unexpectedly shed jobs despite a likely boost from hiring related to the federal election.

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National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow appears on Fox Business news to discuss the November jobs report, economic growth and the China trade discussions.
Kudlow highlights the primary point that President Trump has reestablished Main Street USA as the primary focus of policy.  U.S. companies invested in the U.S. economy are doing exceptionally well and receiving the majority benefit.  U.S. multinational companies who are invested overseas are not benefiting as much.  Wall St -vs- Main Street.

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Director Kudlow is correct, if the House can ratify the USMCA trade deal, North America will see a massive influx of investment.
In essence Titan Trump is winning the economic battle by: (a) repatriating wealth (trade policy); (b) blocking exfiltration (main street policy); (c) creating new and modern economic alliances based on reciprocity (bilateral deals); and (d) dismantling the post WWII Marshal plan of global trade and one-way tariffs (de-globalization).
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“These are the best jobs numbers of our lives”…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released the jobs number for November and the results are astoundingly excellent.  November jobs gains 266,000; the year-over-year wage growth is 3.1% with non-supervisory wages growing double the rate of supervisory wages. The unemployment rate dropped slightly to 3.5 percent.

Additionally, September was revised up by 13,000 from +180,000 to +193,000, and the change for October was revised up by 28,000 from +128,000 to +156,000. With these revisions, employment gains in September and October combined were 41,000 more than previously reported.  [Full BLS Report Here]
Also in November, 1.2 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force. This is a reduction of 432,000 from a year earlier. Those additional jobs are not counted in any labor report because those returning workers were previously not looking for employment; they came off the sidelines and entered the workforce.  AMERICA IS WORKING AGAIN !
The pundits are shocked, s.h.o.c.k.e.d!
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As the House impeachment of President Donald Trump becomes more of a forgone political conclusion it’s worth considering what terms and conditions Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will extract in order to preserve a Trump Presidency.
Most political pundits will not correctly outline the status of the possibilities, because most political pundits are willfully blind to the structure of the McConnell Senate.
First, McConnell doesn’t care about holding a majority position in the Senate.  Whether he is a majority leader or a minority leader doesn’t matter to McConnell. In fact McConnell’s political skill-set does better in the minority than the majority.
The preferred political position for Mitch McConnell is where he has between 45 and 49 republican Senators, and the Democrats hold the Majority with around 55.  Of course with Reid’s retirement, this would now be with Majority leader Chuck Schumer holding office.
Why does McConnell prefer the minority position?
The answer is where you have had to actually follow Mitch McConnell closely to see how he works.   When the Majority has around 52 to 55 seats, they need McConnell to give them 8 to 9 votes to overcome the three-fifths (60 vote) threshold for their legislative needs.  It is in the process of trade and payment for those 8 to 9 votes where McConnell makes more money, and holds more power, than as a sitting Majority Leader.
The 60 vote threshold, and McConnell’s incredible skillset in the minority, is where he shines.  Each of the needed votes to achieve sixty is worth buckets of indulgence to the minority leader.  This is why McConnell never changed the Senate rules for legislative passage.
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