Restriction...

President Donald Trump moved  to further limit travel by Congress members during the partial government shutdown by barring them from using government planes without prior written approval.

The new policy, announced in a memo to department heads, was put in place one day after Trump canceled a military plane for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was planning to lead a congressional delegation to Afghanistan this weekend.

"Under no circumstances during a government shutdown will any government owned, rented, leased or chartered aircraft support any Congressional delegation, without the express written approval of the White House Chief of Staff," wrote Russell Vought, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. 

"Nor will any funds appropriated to the Executive Branch be used for any Congressional delegation travel expenses, without his express written approval,” Vought’s memo said.

Oh no.. No Fun in the Sun in Egypt.

Criticism...

Iran kept up its criticism of the FBI's apparent arrest of an American anchorwoman from Iran's state-run English-language TV channel.  

The hard-line Vatan-e Emrooz paper criticized the detention of Press TV's Marzieh Hashemi as "Saudi-style behavior with a critical journalist."

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told Press TV that "we have a right to continue to look after her interests" as Hashemi, born Melanie Franklin in New Orleans, also holds Iranian citizenship.  

Federal law allows judges to order witnesses to be arrested and detained if the government can prove their testimony has extraordinary value for a criminal case and that they would be a flight risk and unlikely to respond to a subpoena. 

The statute generally requires those witnesses to be promptly released once they are deposed. 

نظام غذائي

Add some Fava beans, lentil, falafel, Haumos, Chilli, Brown Rice, and the likes.

Negative...

You magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter out positive ones. 

When something bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself. 

You hear that an evening out with friends is canceled, and you assume no one wanted to be around you.

You automatically anticipate the worst. The drive-through coffee shop gets your order wrong and you automatically think that the rest of your day will be a disaster.

You see things only as either good or bad. There is no middle ground. You feel that you have to be perfect or you're a total failure.


You were complimented for completing your task well.  That evening, you focus only on your plan to do even more tasks and forget about the compliments. So adjust accordingly. 
Just a thought.

Guided...

After initially opposing the idea of her home state granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has had a change of heart.

“I think we have to make it possible for people to provide for their families."

At a news conference in Troy – a city of about 50,000 residents just outside Gillibrand's birthplace, the state capital Albany – the second-term senator said her heart has guided her policy reversals on issues such as gun control, granting amnesty to illegal immigrants and her opposition to sanctuary cities, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Suck...

In April 15, 2013 Dove launched a 3-minute video entitled “Dove Real Beauty Sketches.”  

In the video, a small group of women are asked to describe their faces to a person whom they cannot see. The person is a forensic artist who is there to draw pictures of the women based on their verbal descriptions. 

A curtain separates the artist and the women, and they never see each other. Before all this, each woman is asked to socialize with a stranger, who later separately describes the woman to the forensic artist. 

In the end, the women are shown the two drawings, one based on their own description, the other based on the stranger’s description. Much to their amazement and delight, the women realize that the drawings based on strangers’ descriptions depict much more beautiful women. The video ends: “You are more beautiful than you think.”

The idea is quite appealing. Perhaps too many women are unhappy with their looks. It would be a big relief if we all suddenly realized, like Christian Andersen’s ugly duckling, that we are in fact beautiful.

Satisfaction...

Self-Talk...

Your glass is half-empty or half-full? 

How you answer may reflect your outlook on life, your attitude toward yourself, and whether you're optimistic or pessimistic and it may even affect your health.

The positive thinking that usually comes with optimism is a key part of effective stress management. And effective stress management is associated with many health benefits. If you tend to be pessimistic, don't despair  you can learn positive thinking skills.

Positive thinking doesn't mean that you keep your head in the sand and ignore life's less pleasant situations. Positive thinking just means that you approach unpleasantness in a more positive and productive way. You think the best is going to happen, not the worst.

Positive thinking often starts with self-talk. Self-talk is the endless stream of unspoken thoughts that run through your head. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. Some of your self-talk comes from logic and reason. Other self-talk may arise from misconceptions that you create because of lack of information.

If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your outlook on life is more likely pessimistic. If your thoughts are mostly positive, you're likely an optimist — someone who practices positive thinking. Just a thought.

To Catch...

To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen was arrested and charged after being accused of issuing bad checks, the Stamford Police Department in Connecticut confirms to Us Weekly.

According to police, the 59-year-old asked Promotional Sales Limited owner Peter Psichopaidas for 355 ceramic mugs, 288 T-shirts and 650 vinyl decals to use at marketing events. Psichopaidas said the merchandise was delivered in 2017, but Hansen failed to pay the bill of $12,998.05.

An arrest affidavit obtained by The Advocate claimed that the store received a check for the entire amount, but it bounced.  

Psichopaidas received a personal check from Hansen for $13,200 later that April, but it bounced three days after, according to The Advocate.

The journalist hosted To Catch a Predator on MSNBC from 2004 to 2007. He now hosts Investigation Discovery’s Killer Instinct and the syndicated show Crime Watch Daily.

Shocking, something else is going on.  Just a thought. [US Weekly, Nicholas Hautman ]

Skip ...

A federal judge denied requests from unions representing employees required to work through the government shutdown that they either be paid or have the option to skip work while missing paychecks. 

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled to keep the status quo, saying that an order to skip work would be "chaotic" in a best-case scenario and "catastrophic" at worst.

Lawyers of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association had sued the Trump administration to get their controllers be paid while working during the shutdown. Lawyers also argued withholding pay violated U.S. labor laws.

Leon said only Congress can appropriate the funds to pay federal workers and would not force the Treasury Department to allocate funds to the furloughed employees.