monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

"What a beautiful thing to see our hard-working government taking a well-earned vacation!"

Since Trump began running for president in summer 2015, he has repeatedly used his hotels and golf courses as venues for his campaign events — and paid himself for the privilege.

During the 2016 election cycle, Trump’s campaign spent at least $791,000 to hold events at 12 Trump-branded venues: three hotels, seven golf courses, a condo building and Mar-a-Lago, federal campaign filings show. That was on top of millions of dollars more that Trump’s campaign paid his businesses for other expenses, such as hotel stays, meals and rent for office space at Trump Tower.

After Inauguration Day, it continued...

Tucker Carlson
@TuckerCarlson
California is challenging the integrity of the union, not in order to help its citizens, but on the behalf of a foreign population that has no right to be here in the first place #Tucker @FoxNews
5:07 PM - Jan 19, 2018

Just days after the House passed its version of the federal tax law slashing corporate tax rates, House Speaker Paul Ryan collected nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from billionaire energy mogul Charles Koch and his wife, according to a recent campaign donor report.

Koch and his brother David spent millions of dollars to get the tax law passed and are spending millions more in a public relations campaign in an attempt to boost support for the law, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In his morning Twitter burst, Mr. Trump said Democrats were prioritizing “illegal immigrants” over American citizens and military personnel, and argued that the only solution to end the dysfunction was to defeat the party in this year’s midterm congressional elections.

“Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border,” the president said on Twitter. “They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess!”

In fact, it was Mr. Trump who opted not to pursue a potential deal that he and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Senate Democrat, had hashed out over lunch at the White House on Friday. The proposal would have kept the government open, funded a border wall and extended legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, while including disaster aid funds and money for a federal children’s health insurance program. Mr. Kelly later called Mr. Schumer to say the agreement lacked sufficient immigration restrictions.

Eric Alterman
‏@Eric_Alterman
Not in the Times today: "Majority of country that ******* hated Trump in November 2016, still ******* hate him even more and with even better reason."

No other president would ever get away with it. I could just imagine a Clinton president doing similar if they had commercial properties of which they stayed at it which caused them to make a profit from it.

I honestly never really connected the obvious, you mean every single time Trump goes to Mar-a-Lago, we the tax payers, pay his hotel and he profits off of it? Kind of burns me up.

An eyewitness has told the BBC of the terrifying moment gunmen burst into Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel restaurant on Saturday.

The man, who is not being named for security reasons, said he was spared after saying he was an Afghan. "Where are the foreigners?" they shouted.

Fourteen foreigners are confirmed to have died, along with four Afghans.

The interior minister said the recent decision to transfer security to a private company had been a mistake.

Some 160 people were rescued after Afghan troops fought throughout the night to regain control of the building.

Three attackers were also killed in the siege, officials said.

Afghan airline Kam Air earlier told local journalist Bilal Sarwary it had 42 members of staff in the hotel, some of whom were foreign nationals. Eighteen were still missing, the airline said.

The Taliban, which targeted the hotel in 2011, says it was behind the latest attack. A spokesman said in a statement quoted by AFP that the group had "killed tens of foreign invaders and their puppets".

Commercial fishermen and environmental groups could file lawsuits against the Trump administration, if it fails to follow a recommendation by one of its own agencies to protect salmon, sturgeon, orca and other endangered species in the Pacific north-west.

Why in the world would he need a paycheck? He is making a killing off of us dumb US tax payers every other weekend.