US Politics December 2018: ~very legal and very cool~

My guess is through jan 3rd

sweet

Poor boy

Breaking: The President lashed out at the Acting Attorney General for letting Federal prosecutors file charges against Cohen that made Trump look bad. https://t.co/E4mg2kLqP6

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) December 22, 2018

Man it's a shame nobody will let Trump do his job

what stands out to me is how unfairly he's being treated

very very poorly

Did the court cases against Whittaker from a few weeks ago regarding his legitimacy actually come to court yet.
Just trying to work out if that's imminent or past. Thought he had very little credibility.
I know one was from Dems others had to do with then current cases defendants asking how they could be tried if AG not fully legit.

trumps border wall just looks like mueller's indictments on its side lmao pic.twitter.com/V2IlXoMkeG

— m i t h (@ManInTheHoody) December 22, 2018

Ah, of course

BREAKING: Trump has discussed firing Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell as his frustration has intensified after this week’s interest-rate increase and months of stock-market losses.

Advisers close to Trump aren’t convinced he will try to do it, but say he wants to.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 22, 2018

He may try it, but to the best of my knowledge he doesn't have the authority to fire a Fed chairperson who was approved by the Senate and whose term hasn't expired. There might be a side door somewhere for removing him, but even then I greatly doubt it is in his sole power. There would be a statutory process he'd have to follow.

Heh

A short story about the fall of conservatism— pic.twitter.com/LOswJXva8R

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) December 22, 2018

xp - All Wikipedia has to say on the question is:

The law provides for the removal of a member of the board by the president "for cause".

https://spectator.org/28276_could-gingrich-fire-bernanke/

Accordingly, the president nominates candidates for the Board of Governors, but, once approved by the Senate, the governors are granted 14-year terms that can’t be cut short by the executive branch. The chairman of the Board of Governors, also nominated by the president, is limited to four-year terms, but after he’s confirmed the president has no authority to remove him unilaterally. Furthermore, the chairman is also a member of the Board of Governors, so even if President Gingrich were to replace Bernanke when Bernanke’s term expires in 2014, Bernanke could choose to fill out the remainder of his 14-year term as a governor.

Traditionally, Fed chairs and presidents act in concert and without partisanship, and it’s believable that Bernanke would simply step down if Gingrich were elected with a mandate to fire him. But if Gingrich wanted Bernanke gone and Bernanke refused, Gingrich would be faced with two options. The first would be to initiate legal action against Bernanke. The Federal Reserve Act, in section 10.2, stipulates that a governor can only be “removed for cause,” or for some malfeasance. Removing Bernanke for cause, however, would involve proving wrongdoing of some kind, and the process would ultimately be decided by employment lawyers and the legal system, not by Gingrich alone. A spokesman for the Federal Reserve declined to specify which causes might prove grounds for removing a Fed chair, but stated that the “for cause” provision of the Federal Reserve Act is the only means by which a president could end a Fed governor’s term prematurely.

The other option available to Gingrich would be, simply, to amend the Federal Reserve Act to allow the president to fire the Fed chairman at his discretion. Indeed, Gingrich appears to have realized that this would be the best option available. Just yesterday, he hinted at such a strategy, telling a New Hampshire town hall that “if he has not resigned by the time I am sworn in, I will ask Congress to fire Ben Bernanke.” Of course, moving legislation through Congress is vastly more complicated than simply firing an underling.

I forgot who Gingrich was when I was reading that excerpt and was thinking of Alan Greenspan. And I was like “who wanted Alan Greenspan for President??”

About the same number of people who wanted Newt Gingrich, minus Chris Carter.

it's kind of amazing how the media outlets are focusing so much on his desire to fire and less on the legality of it. CNBC said it's "unclear" if he has the authority to do so, then posted this snippet in the article:

Powell became Fed chair in just February of this year after Trump nominated him to take over for Janet Yellen. He was easily confirmed in the Senate and has a four-year term.
While the president appoints the Fed's board of governors, including the chairman, the central bank "derives its authority from the Congress, which created the System in 1913 with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act," according to the Fed's website.

"The Board reports to and is directly accountable to the Congress but, unlike many other public agencies, it is not funded by congressional appropriations," the site says

"The President can nominate a chair but once the chair is confirmed, the president is out of it and the only way you can remove a chair from office is literally if they broke the law. Congress will have to find a cause to remove them from office through a vote and a procedure," Ellen Zentner, Morgan Stanley's chief U.S. economist, told CNBC in October.

But Trump has already broken with precedent through his repeated criticism in the second half of this year of the Fed and the chairman to the press and via Twitter, including this week before the central bank hiked rates. Other presidents privately tried to influence the Fed, but none did so in such a public and forceful matter.

What the fuck is unclear about that?

still though, I'm glad the story is being run which basically calls his bluff in the press.

WORKING HARD...ON TWEETS!

Some of the many Bills that I am signing in the Oval Office right now. Cancelled my trip on Air Force One to Florida while we wait to see if the Democrats will help us to protect America’s Southern Border! pic.twitter.com/ws6LYhKcKl

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2018

I am in the White House, working hard. News reports concerning the Shutdown and Syria are mostly FAKE. We are negotiating with the Democrats on desperately needed Border Security (Gangs, Drugs, Human Trafficking & more) but it could be a long stay. On Syria, we were originally...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2018

god damn I really wish you wouldn't post those

NOBODY CARES

please tell me he died midsentence

the always empty desk -- with maybe a stack of prop documents -- is the best. it looks nothing like an actual, working desk.

It reminded me of this gem.

Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago. Looking forward to Friday. #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/S701FdTCQu

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2017

is that a wax figure

The White House intends to send surrogates on television to hammer Democrats and to accuse them of wanting drugs, terror, and ‘trafficking’ pouring over the southern border.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-plan-to-win-the-shutdown-a-noun-a-verb-and-caravan

it looks nothing like an actual, working desk.

Fitting, because he looks nothing like an actual, working president.

exactly

of course we want drugs, only way to get through the next two years amirite

Good morning!

Good MOOOOOOR-niiiiing

Mr. Mattis was among the few who made clear his differences with the president. Inside the White House, several aides said that while they recognized that the situation there is fraught, they have remained quiet to maximize their own ability to help manage a destabilized situation.

pfffffffffffffffffffffffft

Others have adopted the president’s view that any bad coverage is the fault of the Democrats or the news media.

“Democrats are playing political games,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday, “and they have to decide whether or not they hate the president more than they love this country.”

i hate this president more than i love this country

yeah that's an easy one

Yeah, duh. My way or the highway? The highway, dude.

Brett McGurk, top U.S. envoy in ISIS fight, resigns

he's just jealous of how cool mr. putin thinks mr. trump is

lol Trump is mad weak right now . Chuck just spoke and there is no backing down by the dems in the wall funding

According to a report way upthread, Erdogan asked Trump during a phone call why US troops were still in Syria now that ISIS was defeated? Trump, being completely uninterested in the briefings that might have informed him about the situation, was completely flummoxed for an answer. So, Erdogan won the argument just because Trump is incapable of absorbing any information that can't be summed up in three simple sentences.

If knowledge is power, Trump is a wind-up toy.

Dems hold all the cards here, and their leverage only gets better after Jan 3rd

Something that strikes me about the border wall fight is the lack of public pressure. Walked into Capitol today and there were no protesters, no Wall supporters, etc; just a vast contrast from the Tea Party shutdown days when there'd be rallies outside for Obamacare repeal.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 22, 2018

Ah, the classic negotiating tactic of [checks notes] informing the other side that they can win if they wait for a few days https://t.co/IXoSuIrVC8

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 22, 2018

Only MAGA chuds care about the wall now, and their idea of protesting is posting in comment sections and pledging money that they'll never have to actually cough up to the wall GoFundMe.

that gofundme is not a kickstarter! the money changes hands immediately!

There is a vetting process w/GoFundMe before the funds are handed over (don't ask how I know). I guess the money is held in escrow, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that money won't be collected, and if it is, I'll further wager that it ain't paying for no wall. But then chuds loved to be scammed so...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/us/politics/trump-two-years.html

more isolated than ever

Again.

Senate adjourned until Thursday. Merry christmas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mz5AEgE24o

I feel like the nyt is just trolling us with these articles .

Lonely Trump Is The New Interviews With Red Hatters In Diners.

that would imply they stopped doing the diner interviews

thought this was good:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/outlook/2018/12/22/terms-fighting-trumps-turf-lets-make-shutdown-last-straw/?__twitter_impression=true

basically, time to stop fighting on the idiot's terms. he no longer gets to set the agenda.