Chicago police have arrested four people in a gruesome attack after they video themselves torturing a white male victim.  The bound and gagged kidnap victim is repeatedly kicked and hit while forced to denounce white people and President-elect Donald Trump.
FOX 32 NEWS – Investigators are looking into a Facebook Live video showing a group of people holding a young man hostage. Chicago police told FOX 32 that four people are currently in custody.
Chicago police were made aware of this video Tuesday afternoon. A young African American woman streamed the video live on Facebook showing at least four people holding a young white man hostage.
The victim is repeatedly kicked and hit, his scalp is cut, all while he is tied up with his mouth taped shut. The suspects on the video can be heard yelling, “F*** Donald Trump! F*** white people!”
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There are so many angles to this political storyline it’s almost impossible to encapsulate them.  Today a Politico article reveals the John McCain/Lindsey Graham push to create an international crisis with Russia has found push-back from an unlikely source, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.

(Politico) John McCain and Lindsey Graham are backing off of their push for a select committee on cybersecurity after Russian interference in the election, bowing to the political reality that the Senate Republican Conference largely does not back their idea.

[…] “We’re just going to move with the individual committees and see how that works. If it doesn’t work, we’ll regroup,” [Lindsey] Graham said in an interview.

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Here’s a great example of how the media will get a story wrong 100 times, before they realize the reason they’re getting it wrong is due to the inherent political-ideological filters they use within every presentation.
Against a horrific year in Chicago for shootings and murders President-Elect Donald Trump sends out the following tweet:

Without thinking, and relying on their traditional filtering prism, immediately the media transmit a narrative of President-elect Donald Trump challenging (attacking) Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.   The MSM proceed to present their narrative accordingly.
However, the continually short-sighted media never pause to remind themselves that Emanuel traveled to Trump Tower less than a month ago; and consider the pragmatic effective approaches deployed by Donald Trump throughout his career.
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Checks and Balances…

One of the least understood aspects of congressional oversight is the elite group of elected politicians who are charged with congressional oversight over all intelligence activity. This highly important oversight group is called the Intelligence “Gang of Eight”.
The Gang of Eight are briefed on every covert operation that our various intelligence agencies carry out. They are directly responsible for oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
The Go8 are responsible for overseeing all executive office policy as it relates to intelligence gathering and corresponding activity.  In short these eight elected representatives are in charge of all oversight of all U.S. intelligence operations, open and covert.  The incoming 2017 Gang of Eight is:

A position within the Gang of Eight comes as a result of holding one of the following eight positions: 1. The Speaker of the House, 2. The Minority Leader of the House, 3. the Majority Leader of the Senate, 4. the Minority Leader of the Senate, 5. the Chairperson of the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence, 6. the minority leader from the same committee; 7. The Chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee and 8. the minority leader of the same committee.
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The death toll in the Reina nightclub massacre remains at 39 with an additional 69 people wounded or injured. One of the injured is now reported to be a U.S. national, but no Americans were killed. There is a manhunt underway for the primary gunman, however the Turkish authorities are seeking three suspects.
New CCTV video of the gunman entering the nightclub and shooting what appears to be a Kalashnikov rifle, or AK variant, has surfaced. Warning: the content is disturbing as it shows people at the entrance to the club being shot.

(Via ABC) A manhunt is underway in Turkey after a gunman went on a rampage in a crowded Istanbul nightclub during New Year’s Eve celebrations early Sunday morning, killed at least 39 people and injured at least 69 more, according to Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.
The popular Reina club had attracted a diverse crowd of between 400 and 500 patrons from foreign countries as well as Turkey to ring in the new year before the attack by an apparently lone shooter at around 1:15 a.m, authorities said.
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WARNING: Reporting is somewhat sketchy.  However, early reports indicates one or two men adorned in Christmas or Santa outfits, and armed with rifles, entered a nightclub in Istanbul Turkey and opened fire on the crowd.  According to current reporting there were as many as 500-800 people in the club when the shooting began.
UPDATE 1100pm EST: At least 35 people have been confirmed killed, with approximately 40 more wounded.  UPDATE 1:00am EST Unfortunately the death toll has now climbed to 39 people killed and 69 people wounded.  There are many foreign nationals missing.  The gunman/gunmen are still at large.
CNN REPORT: Istanbul (CNN) – At least 39 people were killed and at least 69 wounded in an attack in a nightclub early Sunday as they were celebrating the new year, Turkey’s Interior Minister said.
“We are face to face with a terror attack,” Interior minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters. Twenty-one of the dead have been identified, he said. Of those, 16 were foreign nationals and five were Turkish”.
US officials also called it a terrorist attack, making it the first of 2017. Soylu also said that “the efforts to locate the terrorist are ongoing. Security forces have begun the necessary operations. God willing soon (the attacker) will be apprehended.” (read more)
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President-elect Donald Trump’s top strategist sat for a rare radio interview Friday morning, urging conservative voters to ‘hold people accountable’ in the White House – including himself – as the new administration gets off the ground. (Audio Below)

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Steve Bannon, Trump’s senior counselor said afterward that he specifically wants Trump’s base to hold his feet to the fire as he steers the president’s strategic ship through waters infested with Democrats and moderate Republicans alike.  “Deplorables and Hobbits should stay engaged and hold ALL of us accountable – including me”… (more)

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Oh boy, this is challenging.  We do not want the Democrat Party to change their mind, and we definitely want to see Keith Ellison advanced to become Chairman of the DNC, this epic expository by Alan Dershowitz explains why.
Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz was really animated earlier when he said he’ll leave the Democratic Party if Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is appointed the next chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

[02:10] “If they now appoint Keith Ellison, who worked with [Nation of Islam leader Louis] Farrakhan, to be chairman of the DNC, you’re going to see a lot of people leave.”

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Build that darn wall Donald, BUILD THAT WALL:

[…] And when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.  ~ Donald Trump June 17th 2015

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Mexican man accused of raping a 13-year-old girl on a Greyhound bus that traveled through Kansas had been deported 10 times and voluntarily removed from the U.S. another nine times since 2003, records obtained by The Associated Press show.
[…]  Court filings show Martinez-Maldonado has two misdemeanor convictions for entering without legal permission in cases prosecuted in 2013 and 2015 in U.S. District Court of Arizona, where he was sentenced to serve 60 days and 165 days respectively.
A status hearing in the rape case is scheduled for Jan. 10. Defense attorney Lisa Hamer declined to comment on the charge, but said, “criminal law and immigration definitely intersect and nowadays it should be the responsibility of every criminal defense attorney to know the possible ramifications in the immigration courts.” (more…)

Everywhere you look the end of each year brings forth a series of lists outlining some variant of an annual summation.   We don’t traditionally assemble anything like that – however, this year my thoughts have been on specifically domestic stories that have not received the attention they deserve.
With that in mind, here’s my Top Ten list of domestic, mostly political, stories that I view have not been discussed with the importance or emphasis they should have carried:
#10 – Jeb’s failure to launch.  When you think about the years of strategic planning that went into a Jeb Bush presidential campaign, well, the scope Jeb’s failure to launch just exemplifies how disconnected the professional republican apparatus was from the average voter.  The party apparatchik genuinely believed Jeb Bush had a chance at winning the nomination.  Hundreds of millions of corporate and individual dollars, from major GOP donors, contributed to a campaign that was intensely futile, but the people supporting Jeb seemed oblivious to the reality.  Almost every incumbent republican politician aligned with his campaign.  Their collective disconnect from the feeling of the average American voter was definitely under reported.
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