Attorney General William Barr quietly took the oath of office in the oval office today with Chief Justice John Roberts administering and officiating the swearing in. [link]

With the introduction of a fully empowered and confirmed U.S. Attorney General there is likely to be a great deal of speculation about how AG Barr will interact with the seditious conspiracy scandal known collectively as ‘spygate’.
No doubt the tick-tock-boom club will sell more books with declarations of soon to be announced indictments, grand juries, etc. However, as with all political horse trading in DC, the reality of accountability usually falls far away from headline predictions.
Attorney General Barr will be navigating a myriad of high-powered political interests through his office at the Justice Department.
If we presume William Barr is not intending to cover-up for the gross misconduct of the DOJ and FBI, which is a considerable presumption, it will be worth watching how the two camps, Team Obama and Team Clinton, react to the shifted DOJ landscape.
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The actual budget appropriations bill is seven compartments consisting of more than 5,000 pages. However, here is the 29 page summary outlining the key elements as negotiated by congress.
WARNING: This is a bad deal, but it reflects the UniParty reality within congress.  Take a deep breath; don’t lash out.  Remember, there are very few MAGA minded representatives. This was negotiated by two wings of the same corporate bird and both want open borders.

[scribd id=399623170 key=key-SCOGFaqwlDLsswYDoZHx mode=scroll]
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• Provides $1.375 billion, or $4.325 billion less than the $5.7 billion the Trump administration requested, for a very limited 55 miles of physical barrier that can only be placed along the southern border in *only* the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
• Contains language allowing only fencing designs in use as of 2017.
• No funding for new border patrol agents above the current on board levels.
• Does not fund the Administration’s request for joint detention facilities.
• No funding for additional enforcement and removal field personnel.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest consumer price information today which shows overall low inflation at 1.6 percent (with energy price deflation, and flat food prices).
Excluding food and energy costs the total CPI remains low at 2.2%.   This low inflation is the exact opposite of what financial media were predicting when President Trump began the series of import tariffs in 2017, which continued throughout last year.

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When President Trump began the tariffs against global Steel and Aluminum imports; and when President Trump began the first set of tariffs against Chinese imports; almost all financial media went into fits of apoplexy claiming we would see massive increases in prices.   Reality shows their doomsday predictions were completely over-hyped.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced today that he will move forward on a plan to allow a senate vote on the far-left platform called “The Green New Deal”.
Now, McConnell obviously doesn’t support the GND because: (a) his benefactor, Tom Donohue, doesn’t want anything to do with it; and (b) the entire premise behind it is stunningly stupid.  As such, those who don’t fully understand how McConnell operates think that McConnell is toying with the Democrats and forcing them to take a position of support that is toxic to their interests…. But that’s not Mitch.  Beware.

Yes, McConnell knows the Green New Deal is toxic to the central political aspirations of the Democrats amid his chamber; and he knows many of the 2020 candidates would be forced to put-up their support, or shut-up their moonbat-wing.  However, that’s not his motive for supporting a vote.  The UniParty Mitch-move is to remove the sword of Damocles the GND represents from his UniParty alliance (both Democrats and Republicans).
McConnell absorbs all power. McConnell views himself as more powerful than all other political elements within Washington DC, including the office of the president. McConnell is the self-annointed emperor of the dark swamp forces.  To understand McConnell you have to reset traditional reference points.
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Mark the calendars; today is an important date.  CTH has noted, repeatedly, how extremely difficult it would be for the media to walk-back over three years of false reporting on the insufferable and manufactured “Muh Russia” collusion narrative.
However, remarkably, today that process actually begins.  WATCH:

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There’s way more to this shift. WAY more. ABC News, home of the resistance insider operative George Stephanopoulos, is also starting to use an atypical process to control distribution of the let-down as they back toward the ‘muh Russia’ exits.
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President Donald Trump Trump begins 2019 with a massive MAGA rally at the El Paso County Coliseum in El Paso, TX.   At this first rally of the year, President Trump is expected to reiterate his pragmatic proposal for a border security wall while Democrats simultaneously campaign against border security and advocate for open-borders.
The anticipated start time is 7:00pm MST / 9:00pm EST with pre-rally speakers and events ongoing.
UPDATE: Video Added

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The campaign of Amy Klobuchar is the latest in a string of 2020 presidential candidates who claim they will not take corporate PAC money for their 2020 presidential bid.
However, all of them (Klobuchar, Warren, Harris, Gillibrand et al) are fibbers, who are “grubering” ie. relying on the stupidity of the American voter. They will all take corporate donations, they will just obscure the funding therein.  [Klobuchar example from 2018]:

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That’s just a sample of the most recent Klobuchar corporate contributions, there are thousands more.
Dark Money is how most campaigns are financed [SEE HERE].  Democrats just do a better job than most of hiding it behind plausible deniability.   To be fair, there were a few candidates in 2016 who genuinely didn’t rely on corporate funding: ex. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders had the best track record of small group donations. However, for the vast majority of all other candidates, they rely on corporate funding and specifically the funding through corporate political action committees (PACs).
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One of the first hurdles presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar will have to overcome is her lack of name recognition.  President Trump lends a helping hand:

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar will enter the 2020 presidential race today.  The media will likely frame the 58-year-old three term senator as a moderate voice.  However, Kloubuchar is well known in DC for her nasty and spiteful disposition and tendency toward fits of uncontrollable rage and anger. 

(Via Reuters) […] A former prosecutor and corporate attorney, Klobuchar joins a list of Democratic hopefuls that includes fellow Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Warren heads to Iowa to campaign on Sunday after formally launching her bid on Saturday. Booker is also spending the weekend in the Midwestern farm state.
Klobuchar’s campaign announcement comes amid several news reports that staff in her Senate office were asked to do menial tasks, including some personal in nature like laundry, making it difficult for her to hire high-level campaign strategists

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“W-GDP” is the Women’s Global Development Prosperity initiative. Today President Trump signed the W-GDP initiative designating priority spending to empower women’s economic initiatives in the U.S. and globally. [Details of W-GDP Here]

[Transcript] Oval Office – 1:59 P.M. EST – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. We’re here today to launch the first-ever, U.S. government-wide initiative focused on economic empowerment for women in developing countries. A lot of people have worked very hard, especially some of the people behind me.
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