Two important videos containing two important aspects to advancing legislation.  In the first video President Trump is meeting with Republican House “whip team”.  The role of the House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise, is to get the various republicans factions to unite in support of a singular legislative goal.  Unite the clans.
President Trump is not meeting with the House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, because Trump views McCarthy as a weasel (don’t ask – just watch).  President Trump gives remarks to the media during the White House meeting:

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The second meeting is Speaker Paul Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Greg Walden. Ryan, McCarthy and Walden outline the three-step legislative process that a full and replace bill needs.
Walden outlines the House Energy and Commerce Committee beginning the mark-ups on the bill which starts tomorrow.
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The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Dr. Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary, adding two more Cabinet leaders to President Donald Trump’s administration.
Secretary Carson passed with a senate approval vote of 58-41; and the vote for Secretary Perry was 62-37.

The Democrats continue using the confirmation process as a slowdown gimmick to stall the Senate from voting on any legislation. The larger Democrat objective is to obstruct any legislative accomplishments as they continue their highly coordinated actions to undermine and attack the Trump agenda.
The Democrats are joined by their UniParty republican colleagues toward that specific endeavor. The aggregate DC swamp is a UniParty of self-interest now openly defending itself -across party lines- from the existential threat that is the Trump ‘swamp draining’ agenda.  Additionally, the recent DC narrative against Attorney General Jeff Sessions is simply a variant approach toward the same objective.
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I shall just keep quiet and allow Mitch to speak for himself. It’s amazing how the talking points of the UniParty take flight:

https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/836657622333825024/video/1

Millions of protesting sand smelts held up little sand smelt signs and chanted in little sand smelt voices: “hey, hey, ho, ho, he’s no Richard Windsor bro“, as they defiantly march toward safer hospice in Mexico…
Yes, today the Senate finally confirmed Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency; a rogue agency completely out of sync with any semblance of normal environmental protection.  Between bites of their sustainable algae cakes, drum circle activists throw themselves into apoplectic fits….

The vote was 52-46.   Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), and Joe Manchin (D-WV) voted for Pruitt.  Republican Susan Collins of Maine voted against him.
The Senate now takes a week off allowing professional activists to regroup before returning on February 27th to vote on:  • Commerce nominee Wilbur Ross, • Interior nominee Ryan Zinke, • Housing and Urban Development nominee Dr. Ben Carson, and • Energy nominee Rick Perry.
President Trump will be going into March without a full cabinet.

Having confronted these Decepticons within the GOPe wing of the UniParty for a decade, ultimately their actions become predictable.

It is the same cloistered crew, in the same Corinthian Chairs, around the same table of deceit, behind the same mahogany doors that holds the key to the coin… every time.
Not usually, not most of the time, not often  – E.V.E.R.Y.T.I.M.E.
WASHINGTON DC – Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced Wednesday that he will not support Rep. Mick Mulvaney’s (R-S.C.) nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

“Under most circumstances, I always give the benefit of the doubt to the incoming president … so it is with great reluctance that I came to the floor of the Senate to rise in opposition to the nomination of Mick Mulvaney,” McCain said.

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Andrew Puzder, the nominee for labor secretary, has withdrawn his name from consideration.  According to media reports multiple republicans in the Senate were not going to support his nomination.

*NOTE* If anyone can find out the names of the Republicans (embedded in various reports) please share.  There is a synergy of GOPe that everyone should be keeping track off – especially against the backdrop of the Deep State being exposed.

Here is Andrew Puzder’s statement:

“After careful consideration and discussions with my family, I am withdrawing my nomination for Secretary of Labor. I am honored to have been considered by President Donald Trump to lead the Department of Labor and put America’s workers and businesses back on a path to sustainable prosperity. I want thank President Trump for his nomination. I also thank my family and my many supporters-employees, businesses, friends and people who have voiced their praise and hopeful optimism for the policies and new thinking I would have brought to America as Secretary of Labor. While I won’t be serving in the administration, I fully support the President and his highly qualified team.”

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This is, well, sketchy – to say the least.  The Daily Caller is reporting that three House Intelligence “staffers” have been fired as part of an ongoing security probe.
Abid Awan, Imran Awan and Jamal Awan, are three brothers who worked within the IT department for members of the House Permanent Intelligence Committee.
Yes, you read that correctly.
You might remember, the House Intelligence Committee is part of the deepest oversight network with responsibility over the most sensitive and secretive government intelligence, including covert anti-terrorism activity.  The Majority Chairman (Nunes) and Minority Chair (Schiff) sit on the CIA oversight team known as the “Intelligence Gang of Eight“:

It would be imprudent of CTH not to point out the “TIMING” here.  By nature of the relationship to the G08 oversight aspect – the recently authorized Trump operation in Yemen would have been a part of the advance briefing to this very select oversight committee.  The exact same oversight committee these three brothers worked in the IT department for….

♦ Does the firing have any potential attachment to the outcome in Yemen?

♦ Exactly like Benghazi, the Washington DC cover your ass machine would never, ever allow sunlight upon such a consequential intelligence compromise.  They would never allow, nor even launch, an investigation in that regard. Too dangerous.

So you decide.
(Via Daily Caller)  Three brothers who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computer networks without permission.
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Sorry #NeverTrumpers, but you don”t get to dismount your high horse and celebrate the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch today.  This is NOT your victory, this is ours!
There is a gobsmacking level of pontificating self-righteousness visible from the collective proletariat within your crony-conservative movement who made the decision to formulate their political argument from a position of opposition.

Perhaps it would be different if you framed your antagonism from a position of advocacy, but that wasn’t the direction you chose.  No, you chose a specific position of opposition as clearly evident within your chosen mantra “Never Trump”.
Perhaps it would be different if you ever had a come-to-Jesus moment and apologized immediately following the November election.  Then again, when your opinion of your own self-importance is this high, those humble words are just as foreign as your understanding of the movement that won.
You don’t get to frame the entire construct of your argument around opposition to a team, and then claim benefit to the outcome of victory.  Stay on your high-horse, move along and ride off into that proverbial land of irrelevance; you’re dead here.
Save your dismount for another defining “conservative” assembly where you can gather at CPAC again and give a standing ovation to House Speaker Paul Ryan a month after he eliminates the debt ceiling and passes a $2 trillion OmniBus spending bill, funding all of the progressive priorities you hypocritically claim to oppose; you’re good at that.
That particular circle of crazy just doesn’t sell here any longer.
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We would be failing in our due diligence if we did not point out a history of UniParty affiliations and the subsequent willful blindness.  First, today’s UniParty useful headline:
WASHINGTON DC – House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said he has not witnessed any signs of the national voting fraud that President Trump has claimed.
“On the voter fraud issue, that really happens at the county level,” he told reporters Wednesday, according to CNN. “I don’t see any evidence.”
“But the president has 100,000 people at the Department of Justice, and if he wants to have an investigation, have at it,” Chaffetz added at the congressional Republican retreat in Philadelphia. “I just don’t see any evidence of it.”  (read more)
Ah, yes, there’s Rep Chaffetz coming out of the shadows to protect the swamp – again.
Remember the IRS hearings that went no-where? Remember the House Committee hearings on Clinton’s email use that went no-where?… and more importantly: Remember the 2010 Tea Party led surge against the usurping GOPe agents and the push to have Jason Chaffetz challenge Senator Orrin Hatch?
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“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation”.

..So begins the Declaration of Independence, the foundational document of our nation. The underpinning of the sentiment was a disconnection between the ruling elite (Parliament) and those being ruled (Colonialists).
In the 250+ years that followed, our political system of government has evolved in an almost circular fashion.  We find ourselves today returned to a disconnect that stirred the initial declaration; only this time our rulers are domestic.  The evolution from representative aspirations toward bureaucratic institutions has determined our destiny.
When we challenge our modern structural institutions we discover an architecture of policies, practices, constructs and self-sustaining enterprise which creates the disconnect between federal politicians and the constituents they are intended to represent. In essence, Skynet became self-aware and now seeks to defend itself.
This is the background to the UniParty.
Understanding the fallacy of false choice: Republican or Democrat, brings clarity to how challenging it is to remove systems of mutual benefit to the organization. (more…)