U.S. President Donald Trump is sending a $4.4 trillion budget request to Congress that includes money for a southern border wall and building up the military, but is projected to increase the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion. White House officials all but acknowledged the proposal unveiled Monday has little chance of becoming law Congress alone controls federal government spending. But the White House insisted the budget proposal still sends an important message about Trump's priorities. "This is a messaging document," White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters at a briefing Monday. The Trump budget calls for major cuts to domestic programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps. But the plan would still not balance the federal budget, in part because of reduced federal revenue due to tax cuts passed last year. Democrats widely rejected the plan. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called the proposal a "brutal collection of broken promises and staggering cuts." The proposal's failure to eliminate debt is also likely to upset some Republicans, who have traditionally opposed budget deficits. "It's simply adjusting to the Washington, D.C., we live in," Mulvaney said, stressing that the new budget plan would help "turn the tide" on national debt. The White House proposal builds on the massive, two-year spending bill passed last week by Congress and signed by the president. That bill includes a major boost for the military, as well as domestic programs. Mulvaney, a former lawmaker and long-time opponent of federal debt, has acknowledged he likely would not have supported the bill were he still in Congress. But he said the new White House proposal does not mean that all of the money approved by Congress must be spent. "These are spending caps, these are not spending floors," he said. Under the two-year budget deal reached last week by Congress, the Pentagon will get a record-high $700 billion for 2018 fulfilling a Trump campaign pledge. "We took care of the military like it's never... Mulvany probably thinks that: - he should still be in congress - this is a step in the wrong direction - not enough information - The caps are too high
this is a step in the wrong direction

U.S. President Donald Trump filed his annual financial disclosure form this week with the Office of Government Ethics, the U.S. government's ethics watchdog. Under U.S. law, all top government officials are required to file annual financial disclosure documents with the agency. In Tuesday's 92-page filing, Trump acknowledged that he'd reimbursed his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, last year for more than $100,000 for unspecified expenses incurred in 2016. Trump's lawyers have previously said the president reimbursed Cohen for $130,000 that Cohen paid to an adult film star to keep her quiet about a sexual tryst she said she had with Trump 10 years earlier. Trump has denied having the tryst but recently confirmed reimbursing Cohen to stop "false and extortionist accusations" about it. The financial disclosure did not say why Trump had not listed the payment in his previous financial filing, but the ethics agency said the reimbursement constituted a loan that should have been reported. That has set off a firestorm of criticism and calls for an investigation into whether Trump violated federal law by omitting the payment from his 2017 disclosure. The controversy has overshadowed other details in Trump's financial disclosure, which is the only publicly available snapshot into the president's finances his debts, assets and income from dozens of companies and partnerships around the world. Here are six noteworthy takeaways from the report: Golf losses. Trump, an avid golfer who frequently visits his golf courses, sometimes in the company of world leaders, listed 17 golf companies in his disclosure form, with 13 reporting losses. Overall, golf-related revenue plunged to $210 million from nearly $300 million from the previous reporting period. However, the president's struggling golf courses in Turnberry, Scotland, and Doonbeg, Ireland, improved their earnings, with income at the Turnberry property growing to more than $20 million from $14 million. Trump plans to travel to Scotland during his visit to Britain this summer. What is probably true about the financial disclosure? - not enough information - no items were actually omitted - items were intentionally omitted - items were unintentionally omitted
items were intentionally omitted

Recently the subject of discrimination has been something I have been thinking a lot about. It was the subject of some meetings with ubuntu-women, something I have discussed with my friend Sulamita in a Brazilian bar at 4.30am and the subject of various ad-hoc discussions at the Ubuntu Developer Summit. As the wider Open Source community grows, it becomes more of an issue every day, and something we all need to be aware of. While in Brazil I made a promise to Sulamita that I would be blogging about the issue of discrimination against women, and I have been holding off writing an entry until I had some real, practical, implementable steps that I can advise people to take to help make the situation better. Although I will never fully understand how some women are made to feel at the hands of such discrimination, I have been hoping my contribution could be to help contribute to an awareness of the issue, and for that to happen I felt I needed to construct some doable steps that people can execute. Solving social problems is hard though, which ain't all that surprising, so I had held off on a blog post until I had some such action points. I have since discovered that there is really one key step that we all need take don't accept or allow discrimination in your community. In my mind all discrimination is bad. Every day people get up and are discriminated due to gender, age, race, mobility, technical knowledge and more. The issues of discrimination, while different in the specifics (e.g. women are discriminated in different ways to age discrimination), the underlying issue is very similar mistreating people because of a grouping they are part of. We have all suffered this in different ways, from serious racial hatred to someone not taking you seriously because you have long hair and an Iron Maiden t-shirt. What is probably true about the writer? - He is easily persuaded - He is an understanding friend - not enough information - He is a good friend
He is an understanding friend