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demmiblue

demmiblue's Journal
demmiblue's Journal
October 3, 2017

Ryan asked White House to reconsider ousting Price

Source: Politico

Speaker Paul Ryan last week urged the White House to reconsider ousting Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, his longtime friend who had come under fire for often using a taxpayer-funded private jet for travel, according to two people with knowledge of the call.

John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, called the Wisconsin Republican minutes before the departure was announced Friday afternoon. It was a heads-up call, one White House official said.

Ryan urged Kelly to reconsider and touted the Georgia Republican’s experience in Congress and work in the administration, one of the people familiar with the call said.

Price has long had the speaker’s ear on policy matters and was part of Ryan’s old “Jedi Council,” a group of fiscal conservative rabble-rousers who used to powwow when Republicans were in the minority.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/03/tom-price-ouster-paul-ryan-243413



Jedi Council?!
October 3, 2017

Fox & Friends guest blames CNN for mass shootings

Source: Think Progress

A forensic psychiatrist told Fox News on Tuesday morning that CNN was to blame for mass shootings like what transpired in Las Vegas.

“I think that CNN’s going to have to answer how they demonize gun enthusiasts and how CNN actually contributes to mass shooting,” Michael Welner said. “And I think that they do.”

Welner appeared on Fox & Friends to try to answer the question as to why Stephen Paddock opened fire on a Las Vegas concert Sunday night. Offering his perspective that Paddock did not seem to fit the profile of many other mass shooters, he concluded that he must have had a cause, and that cause must have been guns themselves.

“Absolutely, people who are gun enthusiasts and who are populists or nationalists in this country are dehumanized. They’re demonized,” Welner said, agreeing with the completely unfounded assumption that Paddock perceived the attendees of a country music festival as being gun-toting Trump supporters. “His mind-set is that they deserve to die.”

Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-cnn-mass-shootings-1ad50b45ba2c/



October 3, 2017

Two Big Frauds: I Pretended to Be Pregnant at a Crisis Pregnancy Center

Source: Jezebel

As an Infertile-American (at least, according to a doctor that one time—and, as you know, doctors are infallible) I have the luxury of never becoming pregnant. I’ve failed every pregnancy test I’ve ever taken with flying colors. I’ve never experienced the abject fear of knowing my body is filled with unwanted life. (And, in any imaginable circumstance, the primary emotion produced by pregnancy would certainly be fear. I can’t afford a child—hell, I can’t even afford to buy organic.)

In other words, if I were to ever become pregnant, I’d be a member of the economically vulnerable target demographic for crisis pregnancy centers: these mysterious places that number in the thousands all across the US, presenting themselves as medical offices while covertly intending to deceive pregnant women about the road that lies ahead.

Crisis pregnancy centers, often located near hospitals and Planned Parenthoods, advertise by purporting to give women “options,” up to and including the right to terminate their pregnancies. Their visual signposting and dominant language (“It’s Your Choice,” “Free Abortion Alternatives”) make them seem like safe havens for poor, disenfranchised gals desperate to exercise their right to choose and move on with their lives.

In reality, however, they’re often the opposite: disseminating misinformation and, in the process, robbing women of their autonomy. And the best worst part of the situation is the fact that plenty of crisis pregnancy centers, in spite of their duplicity, are actually licensed community clinics, which gives them an added air of respectability.


Read more: https://jezebel.com/two-big-frauds-i-pretended-to-be-pregnant-at-a-crisis-1700059198?utm_campaign=socialfow_jezebel_twitter&utm_source=jezebel_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
October 3, 2017

E.P.A. Chiefs Calendar: A Stream of Industry Meetings and Trips Home

Source: NYT

WASHINGTON — For lunch on April 26, Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, dined with top executives from Southern Company, one of the nation’s largest coal-burning electric utilities, at Equinox, a white-tablecloth favorite of Washington power brokers.

That evening, it was on to BLT Prime, a steakhouse inside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, for a meal with the board of directors of Alliance Resource Partners, a coal-mining giant whose chief executive donated nearly $2 million to help elect President Trump.

Before those two agenda items, Mr. Pruitt met privately with top executives and lobbyists from General Motors to talk about their request to block an Obama administration move to curb emissions that contribute to climate change.

It was just a typical day for Mr. Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general. Since taking office in February, Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. chief has held back-to-back meetings, briefing sessions and speaking engagements almost daily with top corporate executives and lobbyists from all the major economic sectors that he regulates — and almost no meetings with environmental groups or consumer or public health advocates, according to a 320-page accounting of his daily schedule from February through May, the most detailed look yet at what Mr. Pruitt has been up to since he took over the agency.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/politics/epa-scott-pruitt-calendar-industries-coal-oil-environmentalists.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

October 2, 2017

Las Vegas residents line up to donate blood after mass shooting

Source: The Hill

Lines to donate blood at Las Vegas clinics were already out the door just hours after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history took place in the city.

Las Vegas residents were pictured waiting outside clinics to give blood before sunrise as hospitals treat the more than 400 injured in the mass shooting that left at least 50 dead.

Local reporters shared photos of people waiting overnight to give blood to treat shooting victims.


More: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/353407-las-vegas-residents-line-up-to-donate-blood-after-mass-shooting

https://twitter.com/YasmeenTV/status/914819772990111745
https://twitter.com/bridgetkbennett/status/914848008289710080

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