to spend more time with his family.........except he is under court order not to abuse them either.

-Mrs. Betty Bowers

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/851861078745137152

Why exactly is the Trump White House so royally screwed up? Is it because so few of the top staffers have any prior experience in government? Or might it be because Trump and his team tried to do too many difficult things too quickly?

According to GOP strategist Rick Wilson, the blame lies squarely with Donald Trump himself because, as Wilson notes in a piece he wrote for The Daily Beast, institutions tend to resemble the people who lead them:

“As long as Trump is president, there will never be a pivot. There is no better version of Trump, simply waiting for the right org chart or the right staffer.”

http://www.liberalamerica.org/2017/04/10/gop-strategist-white-house-doomed-fail-no-better-version-trump/?utm_campaign=crowdfire&utm_content=crowdfire&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter#825518870421180416-tw#1491910210193

snip

Meanwhile, if customers are shocked by the fine print of United’s contract of carriage, what recourse do they have against the company? Very little. In the last decade, class-action lawsuits have become endangered thanks to a series of Supreme Court rulings that have undercut consumer rights. Disputes over fine-print regulation are increasingly likely to be settled in arbitration, without a judge or jury, where the deck is stacked against the individual plaintiff and the decisions are practically impossible to appeal.

In this way, the United video serves as a stark metaphor, one where the quiet brutalization of consumers is rendered in shocking, literal form. The first thought that I had watching the outrageous footage of a passenger being dragged through an aisle like a bag of trash was that this should never happen. But fundamentally, this is an old story: Companies in concentrated industries, like the airlines, have legal cover to break the most basic promise to consumers without legally breaking their contracts. The video is a scandal. But so is the law.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/united-video-scandal-law/522552/

In the end, WE will reimburse Palm Beach County, dig deep my friends

WEST PALM BEACH — Commissioners in Palm Beach County are so tired of spending money on President Donald Trump's frequent visits to his Mar-a-Lago resort that some are suggesting a special tax be levied against the property if the federal government doesn't reimburse its costs.

Palm Beach County spends more than $60,000 a day when the president visits, mostly for law enforcement overtime — almost $2 million since January. Sheriff Ric Bradshaw estimated the county would spend $250,000 during Trump's recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the president's sixth trip to his Winter White House in the 12 weeks since his inauguration.

County Commissioner Dave Kerner has suggested turning Mar-a-Lago into a special taxing district and imposing a levy on the resort to pay the president's security costs. Because Mar-a-Lago is incorporated as a club, it pays lower property taxes than hotels. It also gets a tax break because Trump surrendered development rights after he purchased the property from the estate of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post for $10 million in 1985.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/palm-beach-county-considers-special-tax-for-trumps-mar-a-lago-visits/2319819

GREAT! Our foreign policy is run by a privileged dilettante, may the gods help us

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dylann-roof-charleston-church-shooter-pleads-guilty-state-charges-n744746?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

Roof will be taken to a federal prison in another state, where he will await his execution on charges of hate crimes and obstruction of the practice of religion

While the catalyst is unclear, it appears the market dropped as headlines of further sanctions against Russia appeared and reports of China deploiying 150,000 troops to its North Korea border.

According to Korean news agency Chosun, the "Chinese army has deployed about 150,000 troops to the North Korean border in two groups to prepare for unforeseen circumstances." The reason: the prospect of "military options", such as preemptive attacks on North Korea, like the one the United States launched on Syria.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-10/stocks-slide-below-airstrikes-support-amid-russia-china-chatter

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/midday-update-stocks-return-gains-on-reports-of-chinese-troop-deployments-on-n-korea-border-cm772273

http://www.al.com/news/montgomery/index.ssf/2017/04/alabama_gov_robert_bentley.html

Oh how the NRA barrel strokers will love this

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Legislature may have an unusual request for voters in the next general election that harkens back to that fateful summer day in 1804 when a bitter rivalry between U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and the nation's first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, was settled with a fatal gunshot.

Should ongoing discussions in Salem materialize, voters would see a question on their general-election ballots asking if a 172-year-old ban on dueling by public officials — as in, the old-fashioned way of resolving fights — should be erased from the Oregon Constitution.

The constitutional ban in question is Article II, Section 9, which says anyone who offers, accepts, knowingly participates in a "challenge to fight a duel ... or who shall agree to go out of the State to fight a duel, shall be ineligible to any office of trust, or profit." (this is exact language from the constitution)

The article was signed into law just 30 minutes after its drafting by the second provisional legislature in 1845, almost 15 years before Oregon's statehood, when squabbles were still often resolved by duel even decades after Hamilton's death on the opposite side of the country.

https://www.apnews.com/addcb3db561045d5a65856833639785d/Oregon-voters-may-decide-to-toss-constitutional-ban-on-duels