MAGAnomics – The first round of economic results from 2017 holiday sales are coming in and the results are incredible. Total holiday sales from November and December increased 5.5% over the prior year, that’s a massive jump.

Keep in mind, two-thirds of GDP is attached to consumer spending.  The spending jump to $692 billion will increase fourth quarter GDP growth when calculated.

(Via CNBC) Holiday sales jumped 5.5 percent compared with last year, marking the largest jump seen since the end of the Great Recession, the National Retail Federation said Friday.

Total sales for November and December were $691.9 billion, exceeding the industry trade group’s forecast of between $678.75 billion and $682 billion, which would have been an increase of between 3.6 and 4 percent.

“We knew going in that retailers were going to have a good holiday season but the results are even better than anything we could have hoped for,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said.

Economists and advisors had expected robust spending across the board due to strong employment and consumer confidence. However, many questioned exactly where that increased spending would go.

Over the holidays, the strongest performers were building materials and supply stores (8.1 percent growth ), furniture (7.5 percent growth) and electronics (6.7 percent growth). Clothing/accessories and health/personal care clocked in weaker growth, up 2.7 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively.  (read more)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivers the White House press briefing for Wednesday January 17th.  Secretary Sanders is joined by a DOJ official to help show the connection between immigration policy and the evolving threat from terrorism.

Department of Justice, Asst. Attorney General Ed O’Callahan (part of the National Security Division), delivered remarks on the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security Release Data Release on Terrorism-Related Activity –SEE HERE-

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U.S. Dept of Justice – Today, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report, revealing that three out of every four, or 402, individuals convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2016 were foreign-born.

Over the same period, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed approximately 1,716 aliens with national security concerns. Further, in 2017 alone DHS had 2,554 encounters with individuals on the terrorist watch list (also known as the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database) traveling to the United States.  (continue reading)

CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta has a history of rude journalistic behavior and disrespect that has never before been allowed in the White House.

Today during an oval office meeting between President Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan the CNN journalist exhibited a level of disrespectful behavior that should lead to his White House press credentials being revoked permanently.

There is more than a little connective tissue behind a series of Project Veritas undercover investigative reports on how Twitter surveillance data is utilized, and recent discoveries of how FBI contractors were weaponizing FISA surveillance data against political opposition.

In each example, private company or big government, surveillance data forms the basis for the weaponization.  In an era when people don’t think twice before engaging on social media platforms, the Project Veritas series presents a warning worth sharing.

Part I HERE – Part II HERE – Part III is below:

(San Francisco) Project Veritas has released undercover footage of Twitter Engineers and employees admitting that Twitter employees view all of your private messages on their servers and analyze it to create a “virtual profile” of you which they sell to advertisers.

The footage features four current Twitter software engineers–Conrado Miranda, Clay Haynes, Pranay Singh, and Mihai Alexandru Florea. (more)