There’s an extensive back story to this issue: Part I, and Part II, and Part III

(President Trump Tweet Link)

The Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, has resigned. Senator Elizabeth Warren does not want President Trump to appoint an interim replacement.  President Trump has announced OMB Director Mick Mulvaney will be the “acting” head of the agency until he nominates a permanent replacement for senate confirmation. Senator Warren wants to take President Trump to court to stop him filling the interim position.
The U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), has provided legal guidance (full pdf outline of opinion below), and decided that President Trump clearly has the authority to appoint the acting Director.  Senator Elizabeth Warren is going bananas.
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Oh boy,  there’s a particular joy when all the lead-up economic data, that naysayer’s claim is simply outliers, leads to predictions that become reality.  Remember when we shared:

…”Hold on to your economic britches peeps – throw dem ju-ju bones out the windows – grab hold of the young-un’s, squeeze em tight and introduce them to their first opportunity to see capitalism unchained; we are in uncharted MAGA territory now. Q4 will be well beyond 3.2% 3.8%… Well Beyond.”…

Allow me the indulgence of setting the stage.  Last week the New York Fed increased the fourth quarter GDP growth estimates to 3.8%. This followed a prior week when they raised that same estimate to 3.2%.   Obviously, much to their chagrin, the underlying economic data was far surpassing the earlier forecasts of the doom club.  {{{CTH snickered}}}
Now, wait for it,… as we review the preliminary results it is important to remember that Consumer Spending represents two-thirds of U.S. GDP.
OK, you ready?….  You sure?….  Well:
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This image from Sweden speaks so loudly:

Concrete K-Rail Barriers, positioned to stop terrorist attacks by vehicles, dressed up like Christmas decorations around the local holiday markets.  What a ridiculously sad and pathetic visual of everything wrong in Europe.
Amid the anxiety of anticipating the next Jihadist attack, which everyone knows is not if – but rather ‘when’, it would appear joy is somewhat lowered on the scale of relativity.

EUROPE – The Islamic State has issued chilling threat to attack Christmas markets in the Britain, France and Germany in pictures circulated among supporters.

The jihadis have circulated images on messaging apps including one in which a black-clad hooded figure is seen standing over a kneeling Santa Claus with an image of Regent Street in the background.

A message in English, French, and German says ‘Soon on your holidays’ with the clear implication that London can expect a terrorist attack over the holiday season.  (read more)

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There was a great deal of speculation that a big time Florida law majority partner and founder Democrat John Morgan was going to run for Florida Governor.  Morgan has been growing in political influence within Florida for years and was a massive donor to Democrats.  Well, he just quit the Democrat Party.
Morgan was a bundler for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, Morgan even held a $30,000 per plate fundraiser for Obama.  Though he seemed to butt-heads with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, often publicly.
Morgan also provided the landing place for Charlie Crist when his Senatorial political aspirations collapsed in 2010 under the weight of his evolution from Republican, to independent, to Democrat.

TALLAHASSEE — John Morgan tossed a bomb Friday into the 2018 political landscape, saying in a post-Thanksgiving message he is leaving the Democratic Party, and that Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson should not run for re-election, but rather seek the governor’s mansion so he can leave a “legacy.”
“I can’t muster enthusiasm for any of today’s politicians,” the prominent trial lawyer and Democratic fundraiser wrote on Twitter. “They are all the same. Both parties. I plan to register as an independent and when I vote, vote for the lesser of two evils.”

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren as an outcome of the Dodd-Frank legislation. With the CFPB Pocahontas tried to set up the head of the agency, the Director, in a manner that that he/she would operate without oversight. Unfortunately, her dictatorial-fiat-design collapsed when challenged in court.  Backstory #1 – Backstory #2
A federal court found the CFPB Director position held too much power and deemed it unconstitutional. The court decision noted that giving the President power to fire the Director would fix the constitutional problem.
However, with the prior court ruling as a backdrop, a second issue for Warren surfaces as an outcome of the current CFPB Director, Richard Cordray, resigning and President Trump appointing an ‘interim’ head for the agency.
Senator Warren, apoplectic at the thought of CFPB critic Mick Mulvaney acting as head of the agency, wants the Deputy Director,  Leandra English, to become Acting Director and points to Warren’s legislative outline as evidence to support her demand. Except it doesn’t…. not even a little bit.

(WARREN LINK)

The language Pocahontas points to in the CFPB construct, points to the Deputy Director filling in during the “absence” or “unavailability” of the Director. The statute clearly does not provide a mechanism when the Director position is “Vacant”.
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Walking in a Winner Wonderland.  Oh yeah, the New York Times writes about the bloated bureaucracy and career diplomats being removed from the U.S. State Department as if it’s a bad thing.  The condescending DC elites cannot fathom why they are unable to stop Secretary of State Rex Tillerson from cutting the rust out of the enterprise and streamlining the mission.

No-one, repeat NO-ONE, could have pulled off what T-Rex is accomplishing except T-Rex himself; with the full support of President Trump, of course. The former leader of the worlds largest private business, Exxon-Mobil, is now systematically bringing efficiency and effectiveness to the worlds largest public institution, the State Dept.
One fundamental question: “what is your specific and quantifiable value to the core DoS mission; and how do we measure your effectiveness therein”? The lack of reasonable answers within the bureaucratic ranks is leading to massive downsizing.
Making America Great Again means Making Interventionism Irrelevant Again – The New York Times outlines why the diplomatic retention of irrelevant snobbery is vital to those within the State Department’s cocktail circuit influence network.  At the rate Tillerson is going he might even eliminate the entire staff for the Assistant Cultural Ambassador to the U.N. Center for Biodiversity and Southern Hemispheric Aquatic Species Rights. That’s the threshold where things are really going to get ugly:
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The White House releases the official announcement that OMB Director Mick Mulvaney will head up the Consumer Financial Protection Board until a replacement is confirmed.  As previously discussed – notice the verbiage:

WHITE HOUSE – Today, the President announced that he is designating Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Mick Mulvaney as Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The President looks forward to seeing Director Mulvaney take a common sense approach to leading the CFPB’s dedicated staff, an approach that will empower consumers to make their own financial decisions and facilitate investment in our communities. Director Mulvaney will serve as Acting Director until a permanent director is nominated and confirmed.  (link)

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LA radio anchor Leeann Tweeden said last week Senator Al Franken had put his tongue in her mouth.  Another woman, Lindsay Menz, said Monday that Franken had squeezed her buttocks in 2010 while posing for a photo.  Two more women alleged in a Huffington Post story published Wednesday that Senator Franken grabbed their butts during campaign events in 2007 and 2008.  Senator Al Franken “responds“:

“I’ve met tens of thousands of people and taken thousands of photographs, often in crowded and chaotic situations. I’m a warm person; I hug people. I’ve learned from recent stories that in some of those encounters, I crossed a line for some women – and I know that any number is too many. Some women have found my greetings or embraces for a hug or photo inappropriate, and I respect their feelings about that.”

“I’ve thought a lot in recent days about how that could happen, and recognize that I need to be much more careful and sensitive in these situations. I feel terribly that I’ve made some women feel badly and for that I am so sorry, and I want to make sure that never happens again. And let me say again to Minnesotans that I’m sorry for putting them through this and I’m committed to regaining their trust.”  ~ Senator Al Franken

Too funny.  President Trump tweets about declining Time Magazine ‘Man-of-Year’ request and the derangement hive goes bananas:

(LINK)

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The New York Times reporters are outlining another silly story to squeeze out the final drips of usefulness within the vast Russian conspiracy narrative.   Comey’s leak recipient Michael Schmidt, and the narrative engineer with a Phd in passive aggressive writing, Maggie Haberman, collaborate.
The outline is that lawyers for Michael Flynn are no longer sharing information with lawyers from the Trump team.  Obviously the intended premise of this engineering feat is infer that Flynn is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller to the detriment of President Trump.  Key word for narrative building here is: ‘infer’.  The years’-long media Russian conspiracy script relies heavily on ‘inference’.

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, notified the president’s legal team in recent days that they could no longer discuss the special counsel’s investigation, according to four people involved in the case — an indication that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating a deal.

Mr. Flynn’s lawyers had been sharing information with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining whether anyone around Mr. Trump was involved in Russian efforts to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

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