As CTH anticipated the first tabulated holiday sales report via Mastercard® shows the results of a very strong consumer confidence level.  The first report highlights a very strong 5.1% increase in holiday purchases:

“Wall Street is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, while Mr. and Mrs. Main Street are happy with their jobs, enjoying their best wage increases in a decade”…
~ Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners

(Via Wall Street Journal)  Shoppers delivered the strongest holiday sales increase for U.S. retailers in six years, according to early data.

Total U.S. retail sales, excluding automobiles, rose 5.1% between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 from a year earlier, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending with all forms of payment. Overall, U.S. consumers spent over $850 billion this holiday season, according to Mastercard.

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Arguably the biggest story of 2018 is how much we have learned about institutional political corruption within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  With that level of new knowledge in mind, some earlier stories about the DOJ and FBI take on an entirely different light.
Here’s one from late 2016 – You might not know the name Marc Turi but if you are familiar with the Benghazi Brief, or more specifically with Operation Zero Footprint, you’ll likely know the issues.

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Marc Turi was the guy who constructed the covert weapons shipments into Libya to overthrown Mouamar Gaddaffi (2011) and send weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Government supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
During the original phase of the Libyan uprising, early February 2011, the first defector from the official Gaddaffi regime was a foreign justice minister named Mustafa Abdel Jalil.
Jalil became the international face of the anti-Gaddaffi elements within the Libyan government. However, Jalil was an extremist Brotherhood member and somewhat of a patsy. When we were outlining his ideology, and the extremists who were behind him, almost no-one was paying attention.
Following Jalil’s moves was ultimately what enabled CTH to construct the Benghazi Brief so accurately – because during the shell game Mustafa Jalil was the pea.
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U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump deliver their Christmas holiday message from the White House.

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Twas the night before Christmas and all through the White House… President Trump and First Lady Melania help take calls from kids tracking Santa’s progress via NORAD’s annual Santa tracking celebration.

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https://twitter.com/breaking9111/status/1077394021205659649
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The announcement of The United States drawing down troop deployment from Northern Syria – with the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia sending in replacements to bolster the region, highlights a much larger backstory.

President Obama’s February ’09 Cairo speech began a sequence of events that led to what was called the “Arab Spring“; factually an extremist uprising.  Bolstered by the resulting chaos the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power in Egypt behind Mohammed Morsi.
However, a majority of the Egyptian people rejected President Morsi’s sharia governance, and asked a well respected General Fattah al-Sisi to step in.  Accepting the request of a desperate people Sisi removed Morsi, disbanded the Muslim Brotherhood and went on to win a landslide election in 2014.   The leadership of the Brotherhood fled to Qatar.
President Obama and his policy team was not happy with this outcome.  Obama supported Morsi, not al-Sisi.  Another person who was not happy, was Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who also supported Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Undeterred, and understanding the need for urgency, Egyptian President al-Sisi then began a long process of confronting extremism.  Sisi destroyed the Hamas terror tunnels on the border between Egypt and Israel; and, despite the anxiety expressed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Sisi brokered an interim peace agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israelis.
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Defense Secretary James Mattis wanted us to stay in Paris accord. Trump said no. Mattis wanted us to stay in the Iran deal. Trump said no. Mattis wanted less pressure on NATO. Trump said no. Mattis wanted to keep soldiers in Syria. Trump said no.  Mattis wanted to hang around until February… Trump said no.

…President Donald Trump on Sunday pushed the Pentagon chief out the door two months earlier than planned (read more)

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Representative John Ratcliffe discusses ongoing congressional appropriations battle and his interview last week of James Comey.
Mr. Ratcliffe points out that congressional investigators have taken the inquiry into the DOJ and FBI corruption as far as possible; it is now up to the DOJ to hold those corrupt officials accountable for weaponizing their offices.

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Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the ongoing appropriations battle between President Trump and open-border democrats.

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Against the backdrop of a partial government shutdown (not really) Representative Mark Meadows (NC), Jim Jordan (OH) and Matt Gaetz (FL) discuss the ongoing budget appropriations standoff over border security and their meeting with President Trump.

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President Trump, First-Lady Melania and 12-year-old son Barron had previously planned to spend 16 days at their Mar-a-Lago estate with friends and family for the holidays.  First-Lady Melania and Barron departed last week.  However, President Trump said Friday he would remain in the nation’s capital if Congress could not reach an agreement to avert a partial government shutdown.

“Due to the shutdown, President Trump will remain in Washington, D.C. and the First Lady will return from Florida so they can spend Christmas together.”
~ Press Secretary Sarah Sanders