Best Music of The Decade, Holdstock Interviewed, and Other Holiday Matters
Alexa Kasdan is the patient in question. She went to her primary care doctor, Dr. Roya Fathollahi, in New York City, for a sore throat that hadn't gotten better in a week's time. She was preparing for a vacation and didn't want to have the trip interrupted, so she went to the doctor, had the strep test and a blood test, and was given antibiotics. She got better, went on her trip, and came home to find that her insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, had been billed $28,395.50 for the out-of-network lab work on the throat swab. The insurance company paid $25,865.24. Fathollahi’s office told her that $2,530.26 of the bill was her responsibility.
The House Republican Caucus has expelled Matt Shea after an investigation revealed that he "participated in an act of domestic terrorism against the United States."
Shea represents Washington’s 4th District, which encapsulates the area surrounding Spokane Valley. He has since taken to social media to call the investigation a "sham." He wrote on Facebook the people behind the investigation do not "share the same political views". He also announced on Saturday to "look forward to a couple huge announcements early next week."
On Facebook he wrote:
Like we are seeing with our President this is a sham investigation meant to silence those of us who stand up against attempts to disarm and destroy our great country. I will not back down, I will not give in, I will not resign. Stand strong fellow Patriots. Thank you to everyone for the massive outpouring of support prayers! I will continue to defend the constitution against tyranny and fight to protect our God given unalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the ability to defend the same.
A Des Moines woman smoked methamphetamine hours before intentionally hitting a 14-year-old central Iowa girl with her SUV this month, according to court documents.
Nicole Poole Franklin, 42, told police she targeted her victim because the girl "is Mexican." Clive Police Chief Michael Venema shared Franklin's admission at a news conference Friday morning.
She now faces an attempted murder charge and a number of other charges from a racially-charged incident that occurred 15 minutes later.
Community members are calling for Franklin, 42, to be charged with a hate crime because she admitted targeting the girl because of race. Authorities aren't ruling that out.
Just in from hate group leader Tony Perkins:
Yesterday, Mark Galli, the outgoing editor-in-chief of Christianity Today published a scathing editorial calling for President Trump to be removed from office. Within hours, the article went viral as the mainstream media rushed to capitalize on what they believed was an opportunity to exploit a divide in President Trump’s evangelical supporters.
But anyone following Christianity Today shouldn’t be surprised by the magazine’s public backing of impeachment. In 2016, CT’s executive editor denigrated Christians who supported then-candidate Trump weeks before the general election, writing: “Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord.”
Dismissing the genuine concerns of millions of evangelicals and publicly questioning their commitment to Christ signaled an out-of-touch, ivory-tower elitism completely out of step with Jesus’ own command to love one another (John 13:34).(Emphasis added.)
Gwyneth on Chestnuts, Reynard on De Lint, the Ministry of Hades, Live Music by Tull and Other Wintery Matters
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Saturday pledged to help impeachment "die quickly" in the Senate as it becomes increasingly likely that the House will vote to impeach President Trump, leading to a Senate trial.Emphasis added.
"This thing will come to the Senate, and it will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly," he told CNN while at the Doha Forum in Qatar.
"I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I'm not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here," Graham added. "What I see coming, happening today is just a partisan nonsense."
“I know many of them don’t want the president to be impeached, but I’ve got a duty far greater than just getting to the next election.” @LindseyGrahamSC pic.twitter.com/mBPmCGFCZ4
— Windsor Mann (@WindsorMann) December 14, 2019
Mitch McConnell: Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with White House Counsel. There will be no difference between the President’s position and our position as to how to handle this pic.twitter.com/baFaTKWvUl
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) December 13, 2019
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Thursday that there was “no chance” that President Donald Trump would be removed from office in any impeachment trial and that it “wouldn’t surprise” him if some Democrats split from their party and voted in the president’s favor.
“The case is so darn weak coming from the House,” McConnell said in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Thursday night, as the House Judiciary Committee continued to debate articles of impeachment. “We know how it's going to end. There's no chance the president's going to be removed from office.”
The Senate will acquit the criminal. They are made men in the criminal organization known as the Republican Party. But whether a few go the other way, giving the Democrats a majority for conviction is another story. And yes, for all we know, there could be some defections from the Democrats. There almost always are., unfortunately.
Ristine described the Holy Family as “the most well-known refugee family in the world” in the post on Saturday.
“Shortly after the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary were forced to flee with their young son from Nazareth to Egypt to escape King Herod, a tyrant. They feared persecution and death,” she wrote, asking: “What if this family sought refuge in our country today?”
“Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border and Jesus no older than two taken from his mother and placed behind the fences of a Border Patrol detention center,” she continued, adding: “In the Claremont United Methodist Church nativity scene this Christmas, the Holy Family takes the place of the thousands of nameless families separated at our borders.”
Scarecrows, A Classic H.G.Wells’ Novel , Metallica in Antarctica, So-so chocolate, Improv Jazz, Steeleye sans Maddy and Other Interesting Matters
When a persistent critic, a lawyer on the public side of the beach access battle, tweeted back with sarcasm and humor, Huckabee tried to silence him by filing a formal complaint with the Florida Bar. The complaint should be tossed out as a sham and an abuse of the system of disciplining lawyers.
In his Bar complaint, Huckabee accuses lawyer Daniel Uhlfelder of “vile and unprofessional attacks” and “repeatedly posting disparaging information about me,” which Huckabee claims violate Bar rules on integrity of the legal profession. Huckabee argues that the Bar is the right forum because the lawyer’s Twitter profile mentions his law practice.
In his bar complaint, Huckabee accuses Uhlfelder, who has a mere 422 Twitter followers, of disparagement. The complaint points to a tweet in which Uhlfelder joked that Huckabee’s Secret Service code name should be “beach thief.” “He accused me of theft, a crime of moral turpitude,” Huckabee’s complaint reads.
As for Huckabee, he’s on Twitter promoting a new documentary entitled No Safe Spaces, which features two conservative radio talk show personalities in an examination of restrictions on free speech on college campuses. Without a hint of irony, Huckabee tweeted: “The 1st Amendment right of Free Speech is precious, but it hangs by a thread.”
“We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it. And you don’t get any water. You turn on the faucet — you don’t get any water. They take a shower, and water comes dripping out, it’s dripping out very quietly, dripping out.
“People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water. So EPA is looking at that very strongly, at my suggestion. You go into a new building or a new house or a new home, and they have standards where you don’t get water. You can’t wash your hands, practically, there’s so little water comes out of the faucet. And the end result is you leave the faucet on, and it takes you much longer to wash your hands. You end up using the same amount of water.”
“So we’re looking at, very seriously, at opening up the standard, and there may be some areas where we’ll go the other route. Desert areas. But for the most part, you have many states where they have so much water that it comes down — it’s called rain — that they don’t know what to do with it. So we’re going to be opening up that, I believe. And we’re looking at changing the standards very soon.”
The world according to Trump:
— JRehling (@JRehling) December 6, 2019
• You have to show ID to buy groceries.
• Wind turbine sound causes cancer.
• Millions of illegal votes were cast against him.
• People flush toilets 15 times.
• The Revolutionary War involved airports.
• Climate change is a Chinese hoax.
When you’re black and gay, there are times when you feel that the two identities integral to your whole self are in conflict. Actually, let me rephrase that. There are times when other folks put your two identities in conflict and you feel compelled to respond.
When I thundered against the ugly lie that homophobia among African Americans was the reason Democratic presidential contender Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., wasn’t gaining their support, I had more than a few white gay men lecture me about black people as they hurled studies at me in the worst-ever display of apples meeting oranges. Those folks were blocked. Now, I have to push back against African Americans who are ripping Buttigieg for what they see as his equating his experience being gay with that of being black.
That’s not what happened. That’s not what he said.
Speaking to a roomful of police officers and prosecutors on Tuesday, Attorney General William P. Barr drew a parallel between protests against soldiers during the Vietnam War and demonstrations against law enforcement today. But this time, he suggested, those who don’t show “respect” to authority could lose access to police services.
“Today, the American people have to focus on something else, which is the sacrifice and the service that is given by our law enforcement officers. And they have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves,” Barr said in pointed remarks delivered at a Justice Department ceremony to honor police officers.
Barr added that “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.”
Real Life are a Melbourne-based Australian New Wave/synthpop[1] band that had hits with their debut single, "Send Me an Angel" (1983) and with "Catch Me I'm Falling" (1983), both of which were featured on the band's debut album Heartland (1983).
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her Department of Education (DOE) violated a court order which prohibited the agency from collecting student loan payments from defrauded borrowers–and then she drastically under-counted the number of former students who were impacted by that initial illegal decision.
In a 14-page compliance report filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday, attorneys for the DOE confessed to unlawfully collecting such payments from nearly 46,000 students (45,801 to be exact) who were scammed by for-profit colleges.
Those students attended various campuses owned by the Corinthian Colleges chain and were enrolled in educational programs which DeVos has personally described as “worthless.”
The Trump administration announced a plan Wednesday to end food-stamp benefits for about 700,000 Americans, issuing a new regulation that makes it harder for states to gain waivers from a requirement that beneficiaries work or participate in a vocational training program.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the new rule will move more food-stamp recipients “toward self-sufficiency and into employment.”
The work requirement covers “able-bodied” recipients. A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman said it doesn’t apply to recipients who are over 50, disabled or pregnant, or anyone with a child under 18.
"The president called out her name as he acted out an orgasm in front of thousands of people at a Minneapolis rally on Oct. 11, 2019"
It was one of the grossest moments at any of his rallies and that's saying something. It was so gross that it prompted Lisa Page, the "Lisa" he was mocking in that depraved speech to speak on the record for the first time. She spoke with Molly Jong Fast for the Daily Beast:
That was the moment Page decided she had to speak up. “I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” she says. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.”
It's a long and interesting article about how he's alienated insiders who tried desperately to help him. That, apparently, tracks with what narcissists usually do. But how can we explain his hardcore, unmovable base? That' the strange part. He attempts to explain it:
Those who can’t point to specific achievements may remain loyal supporters because they hear relatively little that is expressly negative about their hero. If the president shot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, would Fox News even cover it? Trump supporters and Trump detractors live in different worlds. They may not speak to one another about politics, knowing that such a conversation is likely to end badly. They get their news from different sources. They stay faithful to their respective political tribes.
But the crux of the matter—the secret to Trump’s success with the base—may be that if bad news can’t quite pierce the Trumpist bubble, neither, in a way, can Trump. The millions of American voters who adore the president do not have to interact with him directly. Unlike the White House staff, they do not have to endure Trump’s incendiary outbursts or kowtow to his unpredictable whims. As anonymous members of a television audience, they can gaze upon their hero from afar.
If they want to get a little closer, they can attend a Trump rally. In the local sports arena or civic center, they can sit just a few hundred feet away from the president, cheering and chanting. They can express their love for the him in the presence of thousands of others who love him too. They can laugh at his jokes and partake of the anger and disgust he expresses toward his enemies. Excitement fills the arena. What outlandish thing will he do? What will he say to capture the headlines of the next day? A Trump rally is a safe space for Trump supporters. They can sit back and enjoy the performance, because whatever he says cannot directly threaten them. He will be gone tomorrow.
Tattoos, The Tempest, Dr. Who (Again), Peanuts, Reggae, Beethoven, and more
