House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins appears on Fox News to debate the insufferable gatekeeper of the swamp, Chris Wallace.
Despite the necessary obfuscation by Wallace, who is professionally trained to pretend not to know things, Collins points out the ridiculous proposition that republicans and the White House are required to respond to participation demands when the HPSCI impeachment report hasn’t even been produced.  The process construct therein highlights the purely political motive of the partisan Democrat agenda.  At this point it’s transparent.

Representative Andy Biggs appears on Fox News to discuss the next two weeks.  The Democrats are rushing to impeach President Trump prior to the Christmas recess.

• December 1st – Deadline for White House response for participation in “groundwork” hearing.
• December 2nd – Schiff’s HPSCI Impeachment Committee presents draft report.
• December 3rd – HPSCI Committee votes on impeachment report.
• December 4th – HJC “groundwork” impeachment hearing at 10:00am.
• December 6th – Deadline for White House response for participation in HJC Impeachment Hearing.
• December 6th – Deadline for House Republican witness list.
• December 9th – Hearing to deny House Republican witnesses.
• December 13th – House recesses for Christmas break?

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There has been a great deal of discussion about the pending release of the DOJ Inspector General report on potential FISA abuses on December 9th, but no word on the declassification material since AG Bill Barr was granted authority on May 23rd, 2019.

Amid the twists and turns many people have forgotten about the material congress asked President Trump to declassify a year-and-a-half ago.  Additionally there has been some material cited that just seemingly slipped away without follow-up.  Consider:

• Whatever happened to the forty pages of Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe text messages that Catherine Herridge noted nine months ago?  Herridge only published four of the pages in March 2019.
• Why are the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages still redacted two years after their original release (December 1st, 2017)?
• Where’s the release of the Susan Rice inauguration day memo to the file?
• Why didn’t the DOJ/FBI release all of the Bruce Ohr 302’s without redaction?  Will those fully unredacted 302’s be part of the IG report release?
• Where’s the unredacted David Archey FBI declarations that were previously ordered to be released by a DC judge?
• The Mueller investigation ended 9 months ago.  Why are we still not able to see the  unredacted three authorization memos that Rosenstein gave to the special counsel on May 17th, August 2nd and October 20th, 2017?

Those simple questions (and releases) are in addition to the original list that congress provided to President Trump back in the summer of 2018.  A declassification list that DAG Rod Rosenstein asked President Trump not to release until after the Mueller investigation. Again, the Mueller investigation ended nine months ago; President Trump authorized AG Bill Barr to declassify the material six months ago on May 23rd.
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Given the background activity last week between USTR Robert Lighthizer and Mexican Trade Minister Jesus Seade, and their agreement to set up a trilateral trade and labor dispute panel, President Trump now puts Speaker Pelosi in “check”….

(Tweet Link)

Having lost her labor defense shield (well played by Lighthizer/Seade), Pelosi is now either going to stand her party against the majority of Americans as President Trump pummels them over it… Or she puts the USMCA up for ratification (Trump wins) and it looks like she takes a knee….  Well played by President Trump.
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There was a considerable buzz when the Rasmussen poll showed 34 percent support for President Trump amid black ‘likely voters’…. but the political media dismissed it.  Then came a more recent Emerson University poll showing 34.5% support from black voters.  With two polls showing a very similar result it was less likely to be an outlier…. But again, the political media dismissed them both.
However, a third poll, this time from NPR/PBS and Marist, confirms the prior two almost identically.  The latest Marist Poll shows 33% non-white support for President Trump:

(Poll Link – pdf)

To be clear these are just polls; however, quite remarkably the Marist poll was 1,224 voters with a 26 percent minority (black and Hispanic) share of the poll – so that’s a significant poll of minority voters.  If President Trump holds anywhere near this level of minority approval going into next years November election there is functionally and statistically  no-way for any Democrat presidential candidate to win in 2020.
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Jumpin’ ju-ju bones…. Keep in mind as you review these numbers – U.S. consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of total U.S. GDP.  The sales numbers from Thanksgiving and Black Friday are exceptionally strong, showing confidence by consumers this holiday season.  This is not the ‘recession’ we were promised by pundits.
Continued strong wage growth amid all sectors of the U.S. workforce, particularly in non-supervisory positions, combined with low inflation and low energy costs, means consumers are spending out of ‘household cash flow’ which is considerably higher.

(Via CNBC) […] Spending online on Black Friday, as of 9 pm ET, hit a new record of $5.4 billion, up 22.3% from a year ago, according to data pulled from Adobe Analytics, which measures transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers.
This comes as foot traffic appeared to be lighter at shopping malls across the country on Friday, a day that traditionally has been reserved for people to line up outside of big-box retailers and department stores to score doorbuster deals.
Total spending online on Black Friday is still forecast by Adobe to hit $7.6 billion, which would make the day the second-biggest online sales day ever, after Cyber Monday in 2018, where $7.9 billion was spent.

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Candidate Trump was framed for stealing a horse; President Trump was subsequently accused of trying too hard to avoid hanging for it. Prosecutor Mueller eventually conceded that Trump didn’t steal the horse; however, by then the focus was on Trump’s efforts to avoid the hanging.  Eventually Mueller testified; it surfaced there was never a horse to begin with… Impeachment was stalled.   Prosecutor Jerry Nadler is attempting to resurrect a legal theory that President Trump can still be hung for attempting to avoid the hanging, even if there was no horse theft.   Yup, that’s were we’re at.
Earlier Friday House Judiciary Committee (HJC) Chairman Jerry Nadler sent another letter to the White House outlining a December 6th deadline for executive participation in the coup by impeachment.  The chairman also sent ranking member Doug Collins a similar letter asking for rebuttal witnesses by December 6th.  In anticipation of Nadler denying the republican rebuttal witnesses he has scheduled a committee hearing on the republican complaints for December 9th [yes, same day as IG Horowitz report release].

Both of these requests, along with the prior “groundwork hearing” request, come from the HJC before the judiciary committee has received the House Impeachment Inquiry report from Adam Schiff’s HPSCI partisan impeachment committee.  Apparently the HJC knows the report content from Schiff’s committee; which means there will be no full committee review by any republican members of the bunker basement impeachment group.
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President Trump has said he is close to a decision that would designate Mexican drug cartels as officially recognized terrorist networks by the United States.

Remember, within the geopolitical dynamic that benefits all three North American countries, Mexico needs to start taking clear and decisive actions toward all levels of internal corruption if the ultimate economic objective of the USMCA is going to work.

Mexican President Lopez-Obrador is concerned this designation could lead to U.S. military engagement against the cartels.  The Democrats are concerned this designation would mean they could no longer accept campaign donations from the drug cartels; and into this mix of interests, U.S. Attorney Bill Barr is going to Mexico.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday that his government was committed to fighting organized crime, seeking to dispel fears that the United States could take matters in its own hands in the fight against drug cartels.
U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he plans to designate the Mexican cartels as terrorist groups, a move aimed at disrupting their finances by imposing sanctions.
While this does not directly give the United States authority for military operations in Mexico, many Mexicans are nervous their northern neighbor could use it as a pretext for a unilateral invention.

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The leaders of the twenty-nine NATO member nations are scheduled to meet next week in London, England.  Amid consistent pressure on the member states for increased defense spending to live up to their prior 2014 promises (Wales summit); and with NATO economies in a stalled geopolitical stasis due to their attachment to China (5G telecom), Russia (Nordstream II), and Iran; this summit holds increased possible ramifications.
This NATO summit could very well expose the duplicity and hypocrisy of the EU depending on how far U.S. President Donald Trump is willing to call them out.
There are going to be a lot of nervous snake handlers around the table(s), and with the U.K. elections in the near future there is a great deal at stake. The summit is Tuesday and Wednesday.  Here’s the White House background briefing:
[Transcript] – SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I just want to thank everyone for being here today, Friday after Thanksgiving.
Just up front, this call is going to be on background, attribution to a senior administration official, and there will be an embargo on the contents of this call until it’s completed.
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In the past several days; and in anticipation of an inspector general report/release tasked to look into the FISA processes of the prior administration; I have been assembling a file, a series of reminder questions, that peer into the heart of the 2015/2016 FISA surveillance.  Today, is another reminder…  [*ahem* Sidney Powell, please note]

Left to right: Kathryn H. Ruemmler, President Obama, Lisa Monaco and Susan Rice.

Knowing what we know now, consider this long forgotten letter from Susan Rice’s lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler.  Ms. Ruemmler is currently the global co-chairman of the Latham & Watkins white collar criminal defense practice; she formerly served as White House Counsel to President Obama.  Ask yourself: how do these paragraphs reconcile?

[Feb 23, 2018] The memorandum to file drafted by Ambassador Rice memorialized an important national security discussion between President Obama and the FBI Director and the Deputy Attorney General. President Obama and his national security team were justifiably concerned about potential risks to the Nation’s security from sharing highly classified information about Russia with certain members of the Trump transition team, particularly Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
[…] While serving as National Security Advisor, Ambassador Rice was not briefed on the existence of any FBI investigation into allegations of collusion between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia, and she later learned of the fact of this investigation from Director Comey’s subsequent public testimony.
Ambassador Rice was not informed of any FISA applications sought by the FBI in its investigation, and she only learned of them from press reports after leaving office. (link)

How could Ms. Rice be aware of a “national security compromise”, “particularly surrounding Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn” after a “briefing by the FBI”, if she was not briefed on the existence of an FBI investigation”?
See the problem?
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