An interesting pattern of seemingly disconnected political stories is beginning to show signs of a common continuity.  In the bigger of the big pictures seven words continue to set the baseline: “There are trillions of dollars at stake”.
When the common sense Tea Party movement formed in 2009 and 2010 it contained a monumentally frustrated grassroots electorate, and the scale of the movement caught the professional republican party off-guard. When Donald Trump ran for the office of the presidency he essentially did the same thing; he disrupted the apparatus of the professional republican party.
The difference between those two examples is one was from the bottom up, and the second was from the top down.  However, the commonality in the two forces resulted in the 2016 victory.

It took a few years for the heavily armored old guard of GOP to formulate a plan to retain their control.  In the example of the Tea Party, the republican power structures moved in 2011 through 2014 to co-opt the vulgarian movement and impede their disruptive influence.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the forefront of those power moves.  {Go Deep} and {Go Deep}  The basic issue for the GOP was retention of power.
McConnell and crew tamped down the fire.  A few years pass and the issues that spurred the Tea Party movement remained unresolved.  In 2015 Donald Trump taps in to that exact same Tea Party frustration toward the control authority within one-half of the DC UniParty; again, the professional republican apparatus was disrupted.  The movement rebranded and now the MAGA movement wins the presidency.
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President Trump informed the media today that his chief of staff John Kelly will leave the White House by the end of the year, and there will likely be an interim replacement. UPDATE: Video Added

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Yikes, and a simultaneous ‘Wow’.  French President Emmanuel Macron has officially shut down Paris this weekend in his attempt to stop the “Yellow Vest” populist uprising against current political policies.
The primary tourist venues are all closed; shops ordered to close; windows boarded up; 8,000 police units dispatched to Paris and 89,000 deployed throughout the country.

PARIS (Reuters) – Paris was in lockdown early on Saturday with thousands of French security forces braced to meet renewed rioting by “yellow vest” protesters in the capital and other cities in a fourth weekend of confrontation over living costs.
The Eiffel Tower and other tourist landmarks were shut, shops were boarded up to avoid looting and street furniture removed to avoid metal bars from being used as projectiles. About 89,000 police were deployed across the country.

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Former FBI Director James Comey gives a brief press conference following his testimony before a joint congressional committee.  Notably, Comey references the importance of saving the ‘institutions’ (and all the corrupt interests within it) above all other aspects.
When the institutions are corrupt; and the officials within the institutions are corrupt; and there is inquiry into the corrupt activity of the officials within the institutions; then retaining the institutions is the priority.  It’s that simple.  If you take down the institution you run the risk of exposing the corruption…. So anyone associated simply demands another coat of paint.

Additionally, Comey seems to infer that the removal of Jeff Sessions is now part of the Mueller/Rosenstein/Democrat approach to frame obstruction against President Trump.  Quite simply, any action by Trump to expose the previously described corruption is viewed as unlawful obstruction.  That’s their plan, and the approach has worked so far.
Comey is scheduled to return for more testimony on December 17th. Transcripts of today’s hearing should be available soon.
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Within a sentencing memo filed today (full pdf below) the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York recommends “a substantial term of imprisonment” for Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to fraud and tax charges and campaign finance crimes, as well as lying to Congress.
Reading through the memo – the content of cooperation, and the details that surface as a result therein, are entirely different from all previous media claims:

Additionally, special counsel Robert Mueller filed a second memorandum, recommending no additional prison time for Cohen’s guilty plea for lying to Congress, saying it would be “appropriate” for Cohen to serve any sentence in that case concurrently with the sentence in the SDNY case.
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Apparently the institutional protection system was in full force today as current FBI lawyers blocked any questions directed toward former FBI Director James Comey as they related to FBI investigations of Hillary Clinton; applications to the FISA court and the use of the Steele Dossier.  Darryl Issa explains a transcript will show the severity of shielding:

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released the latest jobs report for November.  The U.S. economy created an additional 155,000 jobs.  The unemployment rate remains 3.7%.  The annualized rate of wage growth is 3.1%.   All good MAGAnomic news.
It’s a little funny to see the pontificating naysayers worry over results that are structurally solid and fundamentally strong.  If you had told those same knuckleheads a year ago that wages would be growing 3.1% they would have been stunned at your audacious optimism.

Things are going swimmingly. Exactly as predicted.  Wall Street (paper economy) is reacting based on an entirely new economic landscape.  Main Street USA (read economy), the Blue/White collar middle-class, is dancing and singing carols en-route to buy the fancier set of Christmas decor this year… Who’s better than our economy?  Nobody, baby, no-body…  Throw them ju-ju bones out the windows.  Here’s the data:
BLS Report: Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 155,000 in November, compared with an average monthly gain of 209,000 over the prior 12 months. In November, job gains occurred in health care, in manufacturing, and in transportation and warehousing. (See table B-1.)
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We shared a discussion thread several months ago about how the media are enmeshed within the story of the DOJ and FBI corruption. The media engagements with the parties swirling around the FBI, DOJ and Clinton-Steele Dossier are so pervasive they cannot reasonably report on any aspect of the story without exposing their own duplicity.
As more and more information surfaces about corrupt DOJ and FBI activity, it’s worth remembering the media’s complicit role.  Here’s an updated review for context:

Michael Isikoff highlighted that level of how enmeshed media is with the story in February when he admitted his reporting was being used by the DOJ and FBI to advance the political objectives of the intelligence community. Additionally, FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. –SEE HERE–
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted by the Inspector General leaking stories to the media and then lying about it to INSD and IG investigators. FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking stories to the New York Times, and even hired his friend Andrew Richman (off-the-books), gave him access to FBI and NSA databases, and then leaked information to Richman along with another friend Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare blog.
Lest we forget, the IG report on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation revealed that dozens of FBI officials were actually taking bribes from the media for information:

IG REPORT – We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.

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Bloomberg news is asserting that President Donald Trump will soon announce his selection for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. is Heather Nauert.

(Via Bloomberg) President Donald Trump has decided to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to replace departing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to three people familiar with the decision.

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Background first:  There’s a massive shifting of manufacturing in the auto-industry and President Donald Trump is at the center of it.  The USMCA trade agreement is the newly constructed Trump fulcrum underneath the structure of all auto manufacturing.  POTUS Trump has shifted the location of this fulcrum through auto-tariffs; and the final determinations therein are still ongoing.
On Tuesday, POTUS invited the EU auto executives to the White House.  No doubt Trump, the executive businessman, was seeking to understand their position on how the EU crew will comply with a 75% USMCA rule of origin…. and feel-them-out over what leverage he could apply (tariff threshold) to enhance their manufacturing relocation decision.

Example: With tariff at 2.5% they won’t move anything just pay the duty; however at 10% or higher they might move engine building or transmission building to North America etc to get inside the rules of origin threshold.  Trump was likely exploring the Mercedes, VW and BMW perspectives while Angela Merkel was gnashing her teeth… “curse you villian”.
President/Businessman Trump is setting up a future for high-wage U.S. manufacturing workers.  POTUS is in apex predator mode… the combination of USMCA and tariff possibilities are like blood in the water surrounding: Dr. Dieter Zetsche (Mercedes), Dr. Herbert Diess (VW), and Dr. Nicholas Peter (BMW); while Trump asks questions.
Mike Manley the new CEO of Fiat Chrysler wants nothing to do with that scenario.  He ain’t about to get in the water.  Swimming with Trump? Oh, hell to the no:
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