The Donald Trump Score Card

Face palm. Does the Gorilla rally think it's a good idea to use easing, ordinarily reserved as a stimulus in hard times, to goose an economy that, by your own analysis, is doing just fine? Powell seems to be responding to pressure from the Prez to keep the economy looking good for the election, which is not the Fed's job. (Trump wants the rates set a zero). If the Fed continues on this course, it uses up the principal tool it has at its disposal when (and it will happen) we hit a real economic downturn.

 

Trump's new argument: He's immune from all criminal investigation in new tax return lawsuit
OK, so the president can't be indicted. But Trump's lawyers are now arguing he can't even be investigated
Igor Derysh
September 21, 2019 11:00AM (UTC)

New Trump argument: Total immunity from everything

excerpt:

"Lawyers for President Trump argue that the president is immune from all criminal investigations in a new federal lawsuit seeking to block New York prosecutors from obtaining his tax returns.

Trump sued his longtime accounting firm Mazars USA and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance on Thursday, after Vance's office subpoenaed the firm to demand eight years of the president’s personal and corporate tax returns.

Department of Justice guidelines say a president cannot be prosecuted while in office, as former special counsel Robert Mueller made clear. But Trump’s personal attorneys are now going well beyond that by arguing that he also cannot be “investigated … or otherwise subjected to the criminal process.”

The suit also quoted a decision by then-appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote in 2009 that investigations are “distracting” to the president, even though Kavanaugh himself was part of a years-long criminal investigation of former President Bill Clinton."

 

Melania should be making immigration statements instead of fashion statements.

Her immigration background is hazy. She stated that she was returning to Europe every three months while she was working in NY. That implies she was working while on a visitor visa instead of a work visa, a type of violation Trump has said he wants to stop.

Her claim of being a supermodel in Europe to facilitate U.S. permanent residence and citizenship is questionable.

Her quest for U.S. citizenship was aided by marrying Trump and having a child by him. It's the anchor approach that Trump dislikes.

After receiving citizenship, Melania apparently brought her sister and father into the U.S. where they received citizenship. It is an example of the chain migration that Trump dislikes. Neither her sister nor father appear to have super talents that would have aided them in becoming U.S. citizens.

Melania should release her immigration records considering the stink that Trump has made about immigration and that she is the first person to be a naturalized First Lady. It's an opportunity for her to show the public that everything was done legally and within Trump's world view of immigration.

Trump raves about supposedly having the highest White House transparency in history, yet Melania hasn't released any of her immigration documentation, much the same as Trump and his tax returns.

 

Melania Trump
Wiki

Melania Trump - Wikipedia

excerpt:

"Knauss came to the United States from Slovenia in 1996. She resided in the U.S. briefly on a visitor's visa and then obtained H-1B work visas. In 2000 she petitioned for a right to permanent residency under the EB-1 program, a program designed for people with "extraordinary abilities." According to information from the Migration Policy Institute, only 2 percent of people in their field would be expected to qualify. The Washington Post reports that at that time Knauss's credentials included "runway shows in Europe, a Camel cigarette billboard ad in Times Square and — in her biggest job at the time — a spot in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, which featured her on the beach in a string bikini, hugging a six-foot inflatable whale."[46]

During the months that Melania campaigned with her husband prior to his successful bid for presidency, she defended his hard-line on immigration practices and laws by stating that her own path and achievement of citizenship had been legal, unlike those of the individuals Trump was campaigning against. However, investigative reporting done by the Associated Press revealed that she had been paid for 10 modeling jobs she had done before she had obtained her H-1B (green card) and was still living in the U.S using her visitor visa. The Associated Press noted that "Foreigners are not allowed to use a visitor visa to work for pay in the U.S. for American companies. Doing so would violate the terms of that visa and could prohibit a foreigner from later changing his or her immigration status in the U.S. or bar the foreigner from the United States again without special permission to come back."[6]

Melania Trump obtained her citizenship in 2006. According to media reports she sponsored her parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, who went through the immigration process using "chain migration", a route that the president has repeatedly criticized."

 

Trump called the federal reserve chairperson Jerome Powell a bonehead for not reducing interest rates to zero or negative. Lowering interest rates in the current state of the economy is of questionable value, let alone making them zero or negative.

Previous presidents have refrained from calling the fed chairperson by name and from trying to manipulate the actions of the chairperson who is supposed to be independent and not tainted by the desires of a president.

As usual, Trump is politicizing, weaponizing, and subverting government independent departments for the sake of personal political gain, such as wanting to lower interest rates to ward off a recession induced by his trade war for the sake of improving his re-election bid.

 

The saga of Trump's quest for his wall money is vintage Trump. He lacks expertise in building coalitions which is one of the centerpieces of democratic governance. Like he did in private life, as President he uses the same tactics that involve:

hostage-ransom (DACA, migrant parent-child separations)
coercion (implementing tariffs without Congressional approval to force other countries to give him what he wants)
retaliation (canceling the flight of Congressional delegation to Afghanistan to spite Pelosi)
secrecy (failure to disclose tax returns and submit government documents to Congress)
underhanded tactics (Stormy Daniels payment)
name calling (calling fed chairperson Powell a bonehead)
intimidation (threats to send military into U.S. inner cities and Mexico)
hiding behind a cloak (using the fake name John Barron)
circumvention via loopholes (his wall money, tariffs).
use of doctored information (hurricane Dorian chart)

 

Some of Trump's escapades have employed multiple mafia boss tactics such as doctoring and intimidation together.

An example is his apparent intimidation to those at NOAA that convinced an undisclosed person at NOAA to publish an unsigned statement supporting his faulty assessment of hurricane Dorian that he tried to proffer using a doctored chart that was four days old when he made his faulty claim.

 

And somehow it all seems to work.

 

Puerto Rico is at the top of the list of diverted funds. It gives the impression that Trump is still holding a grudge against Puerto Rico.

Then again, who ever heard of Trump holding a grudge?

 

It did for Nixon too, for a while.

 

Wall Street will eat the republican party alive. Donald Duck has pissed off even Fox News, which is not easy to do. When it comes to money, conservatives hold no prisoners and demand instant retribution.

 

The largest single military project defunded is at the Bangor sub base in WA. Could this be a coincidence or just trying to poke Ferguson and Inslee and the rest of us progressives on the left coast in the eye?

 

That sounds like one woolee would write

 

"ordinarily used as a stimulus in 'hard' times"

"If the Fed continues on this course, it uses up the principal tool it has at its disposal when (and it will happen) we hit a real economic downturn"

Are you just making up words? "Hard times" "on this course" "real economic downturn"

Dont get specific or anything

Chinas side of the coin
Subscribe to read | Financial Times
. State sponsored lending to smaller companies regardless of their ability to pay the debt back. What could go wrong?

Bonds with no maturation date so its banks can meet capital requirements for public lending

. Chinas private debt has nearly tripled in the 10 years since the GFC. They had a whole bunch of silly rules about foreign ownership and domestic tariffs

I tried to explain to you all before, wasnt Trump that started this, he came, slapped on a few tariffs, that he will reel back before the next election, make out its about his great negotiation skills

And you will all fall for it, look at what you are all doing. Hell now, he doesnt even have to improve the US economy, just has to be in positive growth, even if its a shitty 2%, just as long as its seen to be coping better than China around August next year, a couple months before the election

Also, all the mid level economic experts in you low brow papers crap on too much about how it effects your farmers, put too much emphasis on their importance to the economy, its popular clickbait and gets attention, but its another thing that shifts attention away from whats really going on

 

So did you bother to try find out what construction project/s in Puerto Rico were cancelled or delayed?

Wouldnt have anything to do with rebuilding ports in hurricane alley would it?

 

No one is above the law unless they are rich and White and have membership in the Republican Party.

 

OJ was above the law and he was merely rich.

 

Trump defends cash grab for border projects as lawmakers lash out
The Pentagon revealed more than 20 states that will be hit by the diversion of funds.
By CAITLIN OPRYSKO, JACQUELINE FELDSCHER and MARIANNE LEVINE
09/04/2019 02:33 PM EDT
Updated 09/04/2019 11:43 PM

Trump defends cash grab for border projects as lawmakers lash out

excerpt:

"Of the $1.08 billion in cuts coming from military facilities inside 23 U.S. states, 55 percent came from states Hillary Clinton won, versus 45 percent from states won by Trump, according to a POLITICO analysis.

Hardest hit was New York, where $160 million that was expected to go towards updating the engineering center and a parking structure at the U.S. Military Academy is being diverted. New Mexico and Washington State also had big-dollar projects valued at $125 million and $89 million, respectively, halted.

Nearly $640 million of the proposed cuts in U.S. states — 59 percent of the total — would affect House districts held by Democrats, according to the POLITICO analysis."

 

He spent 9 years in prison … Blackness might have had something to do with thank one, don't ya think?

 

Uhhh...no. He spent 9 years in prison for his involvement in an armed robbery. But I suppose you're happy he got away with homicide.