Earlier this morning Commander-in-Chief President Donald Trump hosted a Christmas Eve video teleconference with members of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard to thank them for their service and wish them a merry Christmas.
Participating on the call were: ♦ARMY Unit: 103 Sustained Command, Location: Camp Arifjan, Kuwait Captain Roxanna Flores.  ♦MARINE CORPS Unit: Task Force Southwest 19.2, Location: Camp Shorab, Afghanistan, Brigadier General David Odom. ♦NAVY
Unit: USS Forest Sherman (DDG 98), Location: Gulf of Aden, Commander Frank Azzarello.  ♦AIR FORCE Unit: 20th Attack Squadron, Location: Whiteman AFB, Missouri
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Wassmuth; and ♦COAST GUARD Unit: CG Air Station Sitka,
Location: Sitka, Alaska, Captain Michael Frawley.  [Video Below]

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In 2016 a bipolar, manic-depressive named Glenn Beck covered himself in mashed up Cheetos snacks to give a visible picture to his audience of just how vile presidential candidate Donald Trump was. Mr. Beck carried out these various episodes of unstable behavior; at increasing levels of severity; for around a year.
At the same time he was shoving his face into Cheeto dust, Mr. Beck was prayerfully declaring to the world how candidate Ted Cruz was the anointed one, chosen by God and displayed to Beck in his dreams. This is not the behavior of a stable mind, or person holding a stable disposition.  A new generation of political followers should beware.
People forget exactly how loopy and unstable Beck is. He now discusses President Trump as a wartime president during the great cultural war of 2020.

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This is an edited version of an old post.
The Secret Sam was my favorite Christmas present as a child. I still have it, and I will keep it, or perhaps pass it on to a grandchild. My husband and I recently moved into a new home, and just last week I unpacked my Secret Sam, something I kept although I gave away so many things before our move.
Oh, how I was excited and hoping the year I asked for my own Secret Sam.
That was my spy year, my year of intrepid adventures around the neighborhood. It was one of my last Christmases as a child, I think, wanting toys and dreaming of adventures. Not too many years later, perhaps even the next one, my Christmas gifts would be stereos and albums, bell bottom jeans and paisley print turtlenecks.
Perhaps that is why the memory of it is such a treasure to me.
This year my grandchildren will be blessed with the breathless anticipation of what might be under the tree Christmas morning. They will be late to bed, too excited to sleep easily, and early to rise, rushing to the living room in all the excitement and wonder a child can have.  (more…)

In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Stephanie Grisham Twitter @StephGrisham45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

Joe diGenova radio interview discussing his perspective on revelations that former NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers has been working with U.S. Attorney John Durham:

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BACKGROUND – With research files on the ’15, ’16 and ’17 political surveillance program; including information from the Mueller report and information from the IG Horowitz report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ “secret research project” (their words, not mine); we are able to overlay the Obama-era domestic IC operations and gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period of approximately four to six years.
Working with a timeline, but also referencing origination material in 2015/2016 – CTH hopes to show how the program(s) interacted and operated. A full review explains an evolution from The IRS Files in 2010 to the FISA Files in 2016.
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Senator John Kennedy has many good quotes, his responses about constituent questions around impeachment are quite funny.
The impeachment issues are serious, but the way Kennedy encapsulates the nuttery of it all is actually representative of how/why President Trump’s polling continues to improve as more Americans are absorbing just how ridiculously political this has been.

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Jumping Ju-Ju Bones, Santa cancelled the recession!!

According to the latest data stats from last weekend, Saturday holiday shopping in the U.S. was more than $34.4 billion in sales.  That’s the largest single day in the history of U.S. retail sales.  Higher wages, record employment, low inflation, consumer confidence and economic security means more disposable income… boy howdy, these numbers are huge.
Keep in mind U.S. retail sales account for two-thirds of U.S. GDP growth. Wow:

(MSM-Bloomberg) Holiday shopping set records over the weekend, with Super Saturday sales reaching $34.4 billion, the biggest single day in U.S. retail history, according to Customer Growth Partners.
“Paced by the ‘Big Four’ mega-retailers — Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target — Super Saturday was boosted by the best traffic our team has seen in years,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail research firm.

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The New York Times has a curious article posited today surrounding U.S. Attorney John Durham who is doing the deep investigation into DOJ, FBI, CIA and intelligence community political espionage in the 2016 election and early Trump presidency.
CTH readers are very familiar with the granular details of what’s commonly referred to as “spygate”; the unofficial weaponization of the intelligence apparatus against candidate Donald Trump, president-elect Trump, and later President Trump.
The Times posts their article about Durham’s investigation against the backdrop of the completed inspector general report on DOJ/FBI misconduct in their FISA exploits.
While the majority of the narrative engineering is oddly irrelevant; and it doesn’t take a long review to notice the Times scribes have a motive to frame Durham’s eventual outcome as adverse to their own political interests; there is one particular paragraph that seems exceptionally curious:

[…] The inspector general’s report makes no substantive reference to Mr. Durham’s investigation. But before the report’s release, Mr. Durham got into a sharp dispute with Mr. Horowitz’s team over a footnote in a draft of the report that seemed to imply that Mr. Durham agreed with all of Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions, which he did not, according to people familiar with the matter. The footnote did not appear in the final version of the report. (link)

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As we suspected, albeit against much criticism, House counsel Doug Letter has responded to the DC Appeals Court arguing the forced testimony of White House counsel Don McGahn is needed for evidence in impeachment trial. [Court pdf Avail Here]
This court filing today bolsters the unspoken background motive for delayed House Impeachment Managers.  The House Judiciary Committee is using impeachment as support for their ongoing effort to gain: Don McGahn deposition, and Mueller grand jury material (6e).  The goal is opposition research; impeachment is a tool to establish legal standing to obtain it.  Everything else is chaff and countermeasures.

[Scribd pdf link – Direct pdf link (w/ embed below)]

This court filing bolsters CTH analysis that rushed House articles are a means to an end. That is – a way for House lawyers to argue in court all of the constitutionally contended material is required as evidence for pending judicial proceedings, a trial in the Senate.
This would explain why all the prior evidence debated for inclusion and legal additions to “articles of impeachment” were dropped. Instead the House focused only on quickly framing two articles that can facilitate pending court cases.
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