SoylentNews

Secret Service agent may face disciplinary action over her anti-Trump Facebook posts

A senior official with the U.S. Secret Service may face disciplinary action after posting comments to Facebook suggesting that she would not "take a bullet" for President Trump. [...] O'Grady's comments were made in October, during the height of the presidential campaign and shortly after the release of a tape in which Trump made lewd comments about women. But they only came to light this week.

Great career move.

Watch the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekgiScr364Y

Then read the text, alright?

"Prenatal care. These are the kinds of services folks depend on Planned Parenthood for.”

- Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards

Planned Parenthood is spending millions of dollars in advertising right now, saying they support “choices” for pregnant women, but nothing could be further from the truth…

Despite Planned Parenthood’s claims, Live Action’s investigative team found that prenatal care is virtually non-existent for mothers who actually want to keep their babies. We documented it in our NEW investigative video, which you can see HERE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekgiScr364Y

Our investigators contacted all 41 Planned Parenthood affiliates in the United States, reaching out to 97 facilities, and discovered only FIVE offered any sort of prenatal care at all.

By turning away pregnant women for prenatal care, it’s obvious Planned Parenthood has one priority - and supports only one option - for most women: abortion.

But that doesn’t stop Planned Parenthood from lying to the public about its prenatal services. In fact, this is all part of Planned Parenthood’s strategy to protect its $550 million in taxpayer funding -- by downplaying the 887 preborn children they dismember, poison, and starve to death every day.

With the fight to defund Planned Parenthood in full force in Congress, we need to act quickly and share this information with more Americans so that, they too, know the truth: Planned Parenthood is not a “health care provider,” they are an abortion corporation.

Please share this video with your friends on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liveaction/videos/10154911641473728/.

And for your friends who aren’t on Facebook, email them this link.

In the following weeks, Live Action will be releasing more videos exposing Planned Parenthood's relentless focus on abortion and the lack of authentic health care. Live Action’s groundbreaking investigative report will shatter the narrative and the myths Planned Parenthood so desperately want the American people to believe.

Now is the time to deal a crippling blow to the abortion giant - the lives of preborn children are depending on us. Together, we can put an end to Planned Parenthood’s lies and the state-sponsored killing of children.

It looks like CBS could be running another fake news segment:

Red Cross Reports Major Blood Shortage, Urges Donations [video] (text version)

Every two seconds, someone in the United States needs a blood transfusion. Now a major blood shortage has the American Red Cross issuing an emergency call for donations. [...] The Red Cross is hoping more people get the message and roll up their sleeves. They say the nation is facing a shortage because of all the snowy, cold weather across much of the country.

Are you sure?

According to an investigative report by WPTV, blood donations stop being donations after the needle comes out of your arm. A blood brokerage firm CEO tells WPTV that your donated blood actually winds up getting sold, and sometimes for a very large profit.

Many in the blood industry characterize the money they receive for your donation as “reimbursement fees” for testing and administration. But the fact is that your blood donations are a very profitable commodity that, depending on demand and the location where you live, can bring in some serious cash to the blood organizations that have collected it.

Another thing most people don’t realize is that local blood drives don’t always keep their donations local. While many organizations try to use donations locally, if need or demand arises elsewhere, your blood can be shipped and sold out of state.

Finally, it may surprise many that lots of blood that is collected gets thrown away. a 2011 government sponsored survey found that around one in 20 units of donated blood was just thrown away. This could be because blood has a very short shelf life of just over 40 days, or the fact that blood “shortages” are not as common as they once were.

The Huffington Post reported in 2013 that because of advances in medicine, not as much blood is actually needed for operations as it once was. While there might not be a huge blood surplus, the supply is certainly stronger than it was just a few years ago. In response, blood drives are now being more targeted to specific blood types and needs.

THE BLOOD BROKERS by Gilbert M. Gaul

Last December [1988], the Community Blood Center in Appleton, Wis., made a public appeal for blood. Residents were asked to "dig farther, wider and deeper" than ever before to keep local blood supplies at desired levels. "We've never had it quite this tough," Alan W. Cable, executive director of the nonprofit blood bank, told the local newspaper. The citizens did dig deep; last year, 15,000 pints of blood were donated by Appleton residents to help save the lives of their friends and neighbors.

What they didn't know, though - don't know to this day - was that the same month the blood bank was appealing for blood, it sold 650 pints - half its monthly blood collection - at a profit to other blood banks around the country. Or that last year the blood center in Appleton contracted to sell 200 pints a month to a blood bank 528 miles away in Lexington, Ky. Or that Lexington sold half the blood it bought from Appleton to yet a third blood bank near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Which in turn sold thousands of pints it bought from Lexington and other blood banks to four hospitals in New York City. What began as a generous "gift of life" from people in Appleton to their neighbors ended up as part of a chain of blood brokered to hospitals in Manhattan, where patients were charged $120 a pint. Along that 2,777-mile route, human blood became just another commodity.

The buying and selling of blood has become big business in America - a multibillion-dollar industry that is largely unregulated by the government. Each year, unknown to the people who give the blood, blood banks buy and sell more than a million pints from one another, shifting blood all over the country and generating an estimated $50 million in revenues.

It is not uncommon for some blood banks to broker between 20 percent and 40 percent of what they collect. In Appleton, nearly half the blood collected from donors in the last two years was sold outside the area. In Waterloo, Iowa, the American Red Cross sold six of every 10 pints collected last year to other blood banks. They do it, blood bank officials say, to share a limited resource. Although they have a monopoly, blood banks in dozens of cities - Philadelphia among them - are unable to collect as much blood as they need. To cover their shortfalls, they buy blood from centers, such as Appleton, that collect more than they need.

Nobody disputes the value of sharing blood. But in the last 15 years, this trading in blood has become a huge, virtually unregulated market - with no ceiling on prices, with nonprofit blood banks vying with one another for control of the blood supply, with decisions often driven by profits and corporate politics, not medical concerns.

Maybe there is a shortage. But how can we be sure?

See also:

What many donors don't know: Their blood is sold

To be a Mac software consultant without actually owning a Mac has been awkward. I've been able to work recently because my client is lending me their equipment, but not all have been so cool.

I bought the 2.6 GHz Mac Mini for $699. I don't recall all that's in it as I picked it out a while ago. I also bought AppleCare for $99; in my experience, AppleCare is a good deal. Finally I bought a DisplayLink to VGA adapter so I can use it with my ancient crufty monitor.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/20/text-president-trumps-obamacare-executive-order.html

Text of President Trump's ObamaCare executive order

MINIMIZING THE ECONOMIC BURDEN OF THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT PENDING REPEAL

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. It is the policy of my Administration to seek the prompt repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148), as amended (the "Act"). In the meantime, pending such repeal, it is imperative for the executive branch to ensure that the law is being efficiently implemented, take all actions consistent with law to minimize the unwarranted economic and regulatory burdens of the Act, and prepare to afford the States more flexibility and control to create a more free and open healthcare market.

Sec. 2. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary) and the heads of all other executive departments and agencies (agencies) with authorities and responsibilities under the Act shall exercise all authority and discretion available to them to waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision or requirement of the Act that would impose a fiscal burden on any State or a cost, fee, tax, penalty, or regulatory burden on individuals, families, healthcare providers, health insurers, patients, recipients of healthcare services, purchasers of health insurance, or makers of medical devices, products, or medications.

Sec. 3. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Secretary and the heads of all other executive departments and agencies with authorities and responsibilities under the Act, shall exercise all authority and discretion available to them to provide greater flexibility to States and cooperate with them in implementing healthcare programs.

Sec. 4. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the head of each department or agency with responsibilities relating to healthcare or health insurance shall encourage the development of a free and open market in interstate commerce for the offering of healthcare services and health insurance, with the goal of achieving and preserving maximum options for patients and consumers.

Sec. 5. To the extent that carrying out the directives in this order would require revision of regulations issued through notice-and-comment rulemaking, the heads of agencies shall comply with the Administrative Procedure Act and other applicable statutes in considering or promulgating such regulatory revisions.

Sec. 6. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 20, 2017.

Pakistan student: 'I was tortured by hardline Islamists'

A Pakistani student has said he was abducted and badly beaten by hardline Islamist students after posting tweets in support of five liberal bloggers who have gone missing. The student said he needed hospital treatment after he was blindfolded for several hours and tortured. No-one at Punjab University responded to his cries for help, he said.

(This was written last year but never posted)

        I spent a hundred bucks on my next book last week.
        Each story had an illustration at the beginning, except one: “Watch Your Language, Young Man!” I could find no suitable old women on Google Images, so I figured I’d have to either find an old woman at a bar who would want to be the illustration of a shrewish old lady, or just get out my pencil and make one.
        Rust never sleeps! And boy, but my fingers seemed to be solid rust. Of course, when I was young I drew every day, or at least almost every day. I was damned good.
        Not any more. I haven’t drawn a single thing since my kids were born three decades ago. So of course when I sat down with pencil and paper, nothing was produced but offal.
        Damn. It was late and I’d had a few beers, so maybe I was drunk? I set it aside for the next morning.
        Several days and a couple sheets of paper later and I finally had a cartoon drawing of an angry old crone. I figured I’d digitize her the same way I digitized my slides—I’d use my phone’s camera. With an eight by ten image to photograph, it should work fine. After all, the cover of The Paxil Diaries is a photo of one of my paintings I painted when I still had talent, and it turned out all right.
        Not Mrs. Ferguson. The white paper was a neutral gray in the digital image. “GIMP’ll fix it,” I thought.
        Nope. Adjusting the brightness and contrast removed some of the details. Actually, a lot of them.
        Several tries later I gave up, and decided to just scan it. I went down to the basement, where the scanner’s been since I moved in here, and realized that first, it probably wouldn’t work any more, and even if it did it used a parallel port to get the image in a computer, and when was the last time you saw a parallel port? So I drove to Staples, where all the scanners were attached to printers!
        I finally found a sales guy, who found a couple without printers that cost more than the ones with printers attached. He said they always put printers on cheap scanners, so I bought one of the expensive ones, an Epson Perfection V39.
        I took it home and scanned Mrs. Ferguson, put her at the top of the story, printed her out, and shrunk down like that, again a lot of the details were gone. So I thickened some lines and rescanned. It’s fine now.
        I wasn’t going to mention it because when I bought the scanner I had the idea of scanning all the photo albums for Patty, but that’s taking a long time, they won’t be done by Christmas, and Leila says she can’t come this year, anyway.
        I have one scanned, and half its photos straightened out and separated from each other, but I’ll be at it for a while. I’m also going to scan the book my uncle co-write, and if I get permission from my aunt to publish it I’ll do so. Of course, it would only be of interest to family since it’s about family history, some of it ancient, fifteenth century ancient.
        I really like that scanner! It’s a lot smaller than the old one in the basement; that one’s four or five inches thick and a foot and a half by two feet, and has a power cord with a big box in the middle and a parallel port. The new one is smaller than my big laptop and needs no power cable, as it gets its power from the USB port. It uses the same kind of USB cable as your phone (unless you have an Apple, which is compatible with nothing).
        At any rate, I haven’t written much lately...

http://en.spaceengine.org/index/faq/0-29

Q: Will there be a version for Mac and Linux?
A: Yes, this is planned for in the near future.

http://en.spaceengine.org/

The interface can be a little finicky, so be patient with it.

"Settings - View" allows you to turn on/off the procedurally generated galaxies, stars, clusters, nebulae, and planets. I prefer to have most of these off, except for planets. It will be fun to watch the datasets get updated over the next few years, allowing us to have actual depictions of real planets.

Click on objects to select them and get stats like diameter, mass, and distance away from your current position. Selecting an object displays crosshairs on it or an arrow pointing in its angular direction that allow you to find it more easily.

WASD for basic movement. Left click and drag to shift your viewing angle.

Use a scrollwheel to control your velocity. If you collide with a star, planet, asteroid, etc. your velocity gets reset to a low number. As you get closer to objects, you tend to zip past them unless you lower your velocity at the same time as you adjust your angle to approach it head on.

Right click and drag allows you to rotate around the object you're following. Right click on an object to get a menu that allows you to go to the object or follow it.

Magnifying glass icon is the Find Object/"Go to" menu. If you have procedural planets on, try going to "Kraz 7.4" (no quotes). Then right click Kraz 7.4 and select the Parent option.

Try going to:

• Saturn
• Pluto
• Ceres
• Dysnomia
• Psyche
• Pleiades
• HIP 13484 3.D3
• Alnitak
• WOH G64
• HIP 28285 5.S47

If you listen to the pundits who support Planned Parenthood, the sky will surely fall if the abortion chain is defunded.

If even one Planned Parenthood affiliate or center has to close as a result of defunding, they say, the patients Planned Parenthood serves will have no access to health services elsewhere. This is utter nonsense, of course.

The claim that removing federal dollars from Planned Parenthood will shutter their doors is ludicrous. As Live Action News has previously reported, the organization’s own annual reports reveal that Planned Parenthood has been netting a profit for many years. Almost every year since 2000, Planned Parenthood’s revenue has exceeded their expenses — not just by a few dollars, but by tens of millions of dollars (yearly surpluses ranging from $18.5 million to a high of $127 million). In addition, with the threat of defunding now more real under the newly elected Congress and president, Planned Parenthood has repeatedly claimed that private donations are suddenly flooding into their coffers.

For the sake of argument, let’s imagine what would happen if we applied this same logic — that a profitable organization should be taxpayer funded, merely because closing would disenfranchise its customers — to any other business. Let’s suppose it was thought that department store chains should receive taxpayer funding because online sales are hurting chain stores’ business. The argument could be made that these department stores have served many people, that they are located in many disadvantaged communities, and that poor people who do not have internet access will be disenfranchised if these stores close. Should we then give these stores half a billion taxpayer dollars every year (the amount Planned Parenthood receives) to keep them open?

The truth is that there are Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) already in place, which could serve the patients Planned Parenthood serves — outnumbering Planned Parenthood centers 20 to 1 — so why do Planned Parenthood spokespersons (many who earn six-figure salaries) want you to believe that American women could not survive without them?

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards has even made totally unsupported claims that millions would be without healthcare if Congress votes to defund Planned Parenthood. Richards recently told Rolling Stone:

        This is literally whether a young man in Texas can come to us for an STI testing, or whether a woman who has a lump in her breast can come to us in Ohio to have a breast exam or be referred for screenings, or whether a college student or a young person anywhere in the country can come to us for family planning. We’re talking about more than a million-and-a-half people who rely on Planned Parenthood, and for most of them we’re their only medical provider. As all of the medical institutions have said: There’s no one to take our place providing low- and moderate-income people with preventive health care. There isn’t any other entity that is doing that work.

Interesting that she mentions the breast screenings, because Planned Parenthood, as Live Action has documented, does not do mammograms — but FQHCs do.

I am curious, however, as to how the defunding of Planned Parenthood would cause the apocalypse, but closures of other non-profits — specifically hospitals, which one could argue offer far more needed “services” — would not.

Let me explain.

According to a 2015 report published by the Journal for Health Affairs, patient health was not significantly compromised when hospitals closed. The Non-Profit Quarterly reports pointed out with regards to the study that “vulnerable hospitals that have not been financially sustainable, with operating margins of ‑20% on average, have been the first to close, causing public concern that displaced patients will experience declining health and even death when access to care goes away.”

Despite this concern, the 2015 study found “no significant difference between the change in annual mortality rates for patients living in hospital service areas (HSAs) that experienced one or more closures and the change in rates in matched HSAs without a closure…. Nor was there a significant difference in the change in all-cause mortality rates following hospitalization….”

The unknown in the study was how the closures affected low income patients. But according to Non-Profit Quarterly:

        Researchers reported that among Medicare patients there were no substantial changes in admissions, lengths of stay, or readmissions, but also cautioned that the study should not be interpreted to mean that every hospital loss is harmless….

        While the study supports the argument that access to care has improved, the data does not, however, tell the whole story. One-third of institutions that were closed were “safety net” hospitals that treated large numbers of low-income and uninsured people. Since only easily-accessed Medicare patient information was reviewed, impact on those populations is still unknown.

Unknown? A study of three hospital closures from 2015, conducted by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and the Urban Institute, actually found that lower income and elderly patients were negatively affected and “were more likely to face transportation challenges and thus more likely to delay or forgo needed care.”

But in Planned Parenthood’s case, there are already hundreds of FQHC alternatives available, open and ready to serve the public. A December 2015 Congressional Research Service report which compared the services of Planned Parenthood Federation of America-affiliated health centers (PPAHC) to those of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) found…

        FQHCs are required to provide primary, preventive, and emergency health services.
        FQHCs focus on providing more comprehensive primary care, dental, and behavioral health services.
        FQHCs provide far more services in a given year than do PPAHCs.
        PPAHCs focus their services on individuals of reproductive age; FQHCs provide services to individuals throughout their lifetimes.
        FQHCs served 22.9 million people in 2014; PPAHCs served 2.7 million.
        358 counties have both a PPAHC and a FQHC.
        FQHCs also receive federal grants that require them to provide family planning (among other services) to Medicaid beneficiaries.

Planned Parenthood and its supporters want the public to believe that only Planned Parenthood is able to care for the needs of the 2.5 million patients they “serve.” And they will suggest that if they are defunded and close facilities, the hundreds of FQHC that replace them (already in existence and serving patients, mind you) will be overwhelmed with patient influx, thus unable to address the many needs. (This was the same fear that plagued Democrats when they passed the Affordable Care Act, yet they argued that the system would be more than able to handle that influx.)

A study on the effects of the Affordable Care Act, conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and health care company Athenahealth, which gathered data from 15,700 of Athenahealth’s clients, found that new patient visits to primary care physicians only increased slightly. It was anticipated that uninsured patients now gaining insurance might have unmet medical needs, and their demand for services might overwhelm the capacity of primary care doctors. But according to the study, this idea proved false. Kathy Hempstead, director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told USA Today that the study “suggests that, even though there’s been a big increase in coverage, it’s a relatively small part of the market and the delivery system is able to handle the demand.”

For years, Planned Parenthood has been closing centers despite a steady increase in funding under the Obama administration. The Congressional Research Service found that the number of PPHAC affiliates and facilities has declined since 2009-2010, when PPFA reported having 88 affiliates (a 32 percent decline) and 840 health centers (a 21 percent decline). And, as of December 20, 2016, there are now only 650 Planned Parenthood centers, indicating a 22.67 percent decline.

In addition, Planned Parenthood patients have also decreased over the years. In 2014, Planned Parenthood saw 2.5 million patients — down a whopping 24.24 percent since 1996, when they saw 3.3 million and received far less government funding ($177.5 million in 1996 compared to $553.7 million in 2014). In contrast, FQHCs have increased the number of patients seen in each year since 2009. From 2009 to 2014, FQHC patients increased from 18.9 million to 22.9 million.

Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortion in the nation. Live Action has documented how Planned Parenthood manipulates its own data to cover up the fact that abortion – not women’s health care – accounts for the lion’s share of the corporation’s services for pregnant women.

Defunding the largest chain of abortion clinics will not send millions of patients to their demise — and Planned Parenthood knows this. The truth is that taxpayer dollars can be better spent on real health care organizations that will serve the American public and maintain the sanctity of life in the process.

http://liveactionnews.org/sky-fall-planned-parenthood-defunded-heres-why/

Wasserman Schultz confronted Comey about Russian hacking

Uh oh. That Wasserman Schultz, huh?

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who was forced to resign last summer as head of the DNC amid the hacking scandal, told Comey that he should have come to her directly once the FBI was aware of the breach, just as he had done with other hacking victims. Comey, described by lawmakers in the room as unflinching and defiant, retorted that the FBI had properly notified DNC officials of the hacking.

"You let us down!" one Democrat yelled to Comey during the tense exchange, according to one attendee. Another Democrat described the scene: "Essentially Debbie asked, how was it that the FBI knew that the DNC was being hacked and they didn’t tell her? He gave some bulls--t explanation, ‘That’s our standard, we called this one, we called that one’ — [she said] ‘Well, why didn’t you call me?’ ”

And don't forget the guest host list:

The briefers at Friday's meeting included Comey; James Clapper, the director of national intelligence; CIA director John Brennan; and Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency.

It's hard to imagine such a small space with so many people to hate inside of it.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) took those criticisms a step further, accusing Comey of a double standard that "without question" makes him unfit to keep the position. "I have a great belief that the agency is a good agency, [but] I have a stronger belief that James Comey has done this nation a terrible disservice," he said. "I hope that Donald Trump fires him," Hastings said. "More important, he ought to resign.

Come on, Trump! Fire!

Justice Department inspector general to investigate pre-election actions by department and FBI

I guess I would keep my answers short too, if I were in his position.

The Hill didn't mention this bit:

The hearing took place a day after the Justice Department’s inspector general said it was investigating Mr. Comey’s decision during the campaign to hold a news conference announcing the end of the case — and then, just before the election, inform Congress there was possible new evidence only to say days later that it did not amount to anything.

Mr. Comey “didn’t really answer,” said Representative Jerold Nadler of New York. He dismissively referred to Mr. Comey as “a policeman,” and added, “I don’t remember anything substantive he said.”

Garbage in, garbage out! He should have recorded the meeting.

I, like a few Soylentils, hated Comey some time before he became a household name with the Apple unlock fiasco and election shenanigans. Much like I hate Clapper, Brennan, Rogers, and will have a new list of people to hate soon. What do you think of Comey today?