Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Stephanie Kirchgaessner: "Pope Francis tells gay man: 'God made you like this'" (The Guardian)
Juan Carlos Cruz, who was sexually abused, says pontiff told him God did not mind that he was gay.
Helaine Olen: The Supreme Court just made it easier on employers - and harder on workers (Washington Post)
Will there be workarounds, now that the Supreme Court has made its ruling? There already is one. In California, a 2004 law allows people to file and take part in class-action suits as representatives of the state government, provided the state department of labor signs off on the case. This allows employees a way around contracts they've signed forcing them into mandatory arbitration. As Bloomberg noted, companies that have paid settlements in such cases in California include Bank of America and Walmart.
Rachel Leah: "Sarah Silverman defends Al Franken: 'I'm so sad that he got bullied into resigning'" (Salon)
In GQ, the comedian addresses empathy and accusations against her friends Franken, Louis C.K and Aziz Ansari.
Tom Danehy: Tom is willing to bet that the Supreme Court's decision on sports wagering isn't going to go well (Tucson Weekly)
Not long after I met (the woman who would become) my wife in college, she and I went to a carnival at the Cochise County Fairgrounds. It was a cheesy little gathering as such things go, but in that corner of the world at that time (before cable TV), it was enough of a novelty to draw people all the way from Dragoon and Elfrida.
Michael Gregor, MD: What About the French Paradox? (NutritionFacts.org)
If you chart death from heart attack versus the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol countries consume, there appears to be a straight line. The more animal foods populations eat, the higher their death rates appear to be. Conversely, maybe if we got meat, egg, and dairy intake low enough, we could bring coronary death rates down towards zero.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Team Coco
CONAN
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Cynthia shared the 2 attached files.
Wonkette on Giuliani
Have you EVER read a more accurate description of Giuliani?!
"Giuliani also said we can't trust what DEEP STATE SPYGATERS like John Brennan and James Clapper say about how WikiLeaks stole those emails, because Rudy Giuliani doesn't trust those guys as far as he can throw them, which is not very far, because Rudy Giuliani is a tiny little frail senile trash fuckhead with the face of a constipated chihuahua, and moreover, he doesn't even lift, bro."
Rudy Giuliani's Brain Seems To Have Gotten Out Of Its Kennel Again | Wonkette
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda (& Cynthia)!
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
BUSTED!
TRUMP PUTS A WITCH IN CHARGE OF HIS 'WITCH HUNT'.
AMERICAS 'NEO FASCISM'.
FASCISM IS ALIVE AND WELL IN AMERICA.
GOODNIGHT.
FUCK THIS ASSHOLE!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Yep - another thick marine layer that never cleared out.
NBC Will Stage Live Musical
Hair
NBC already has Bye Bye Birdie waiting in the wings of its live musical production schedule, but the network is adding another show to the queue.
According to Variety, Hair Live! has been announced by the network, with an air date of spring 2019.
The original production opened on Broadway in 1968, and it follows a group of counter culture youth fighting against sexual repression, conservative parents, and the Vietnam war in the 1960s.
Hair is also notable for some full-frontal group nudity, so NBC execs either didn't see any Hair stagings before they committed to the project, or they're just going to wash it out of the script - which would be an appalling act of censorship to Claude, Berger, Sheila, and their tribe. Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will executive produce as they have for each of NBC's televised musicals since The Sound of Music. Let's see how much sun they will allow to shine in.
Hair
Sue Conspiracy Theorist
Sandy Hook Families
Six families of victims killed in one of America's worst mass shootings have filed a lawsuit against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has claimed the massacre days shortly before Christmas 2012 never happened.
Twenty small children and six adults were killed in less than five minutes on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, by 20-year-old killer Adam Lanza who then turned the gun on himself.
A Connecticut law firm filed the defamation lawsuit in Bridgeport on Wednesday accusing Jones, his far-right website Infowars, other financial backers, one of his guests and another associate of greed in peddling their campaign.
Jones, a Texas-based radio host and Donald Trump supporter, has claimed the massacre was staged and that the 26 bereaved families are paid actors, exposing the families to harassment, death threats and personal attacks on social media.
"Jones has deliberately employed these false narratives... as part of a marketing scheme that has brought him and his business entities tens of millions of dollars per year," said a copy of the 39-page lawsuit.
Sandy Hook Families
Declared In West Hollywood
'Stormy Daniels Day'
President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Crooked) just got one more reason not to visit this Southern California city.
West Hollywood - which has continuously gone out of its way to denounce Trump - presented adult film star Stormy Daniels with the key to the city on Wednesday while proclaiming the day "Stormy Daniels Day."
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was honored for "her leadership in the #RESIST movement" ? in particular for being a "national figure in the resistance to the Trump Administration," the city said in a statement.
The 39-year-old actress and director, who was recognized at the Santa Monica Boulevard sex shop Chi Chi LaRue's, won national fame after alleging that she'd had an affair with Trump in 2006. Daniels has continued to tell her story, though she said someone threatened her over it.
In a tweet leading up to Wednesday's event, West Hollywood Mayor John Duran shared that "right-wing hate mail is pouring in" over his city's decision to recognize Daniels. It "tells me I am doing something right!" he tweeted.
'Stormy Daniels Day'
World's Largest To Dutch Auction
Freshwater Pearl
The world's largest known freshwater pearl, which once belonged to Catherine the Great, will go on sale in the Netherlands later this month, the auctioneers announced Thursday.
Known as the Sleeping Lion pearl due to its distinctive shape, the pearl was likely formed in the first half of the 18th century in Chinese waters, possibly even the Pearl River.
Around 1765, the pearl was shipped to Batavia, now known as Jakarta, by a Dutch merchant of the United East Indies Company. It was there that it came into ownership of the company's accountant, Hendrik Coenraad Sander.
Catherine had the pearl displayed in the Hermitage in St Petersburg until 1796. In the turbulent years that followed her death, the pearl vanished from China and surfaced again in Poland.
After more adventures, it was bought in 1865 by a Dutch goldsmith and remained in his family's possession for four generations, before the "Amsterdam Pearl Society bought the pearl in 1979 intending to research it and trace its history," the auctioneers said.
Freshwater Pearl
Stirs Uproar
Betsy
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos provoked an outcry Tuesday when she said schools can choose to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on potentially undocumented students.
"I think that's a school decision, it's a local community decision," DeVos told the House Education and the Workforce Committee. "I refer to the fact that we have laws and we also are compassionate. I urge this body to do its job and address and clarify where there is confusion around this."
DeVos was responding to a question from Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) about whether she thinks school leaders should call ICE on students or their parents.
Advocacy groups immediately protested her answer, pointing out that under the Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe, all children ? undocumented or not ? are entitled to a free public education. Some demanded that DeVos issue an immediate clarification in light of this fact.
During the hearing, DeVos did note that the 1982 Supreme Court decision requires public schools to educate all students, including those who are undocumented. Still, she repeatedly said it was a school's decision if it wanted to call ICE on kids and their parents.
Betsy
Abuse Of Child Immigrants
Border Patrol
A new report suggests that there has been a startling increase in the number of instances where US Border Patrol officers have abused children seeking shelter in the United States from violence and poverty in Central America.
The report, based on more than 30,000 pages of Border Patrol reports obtained by chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) through Freedom of Information Act requests, details 116 incidents where officers were alleged to have physically, sexually, or psychologically abused children between the ages of five and 17 between 2009 and 2014.
A quarter of those cases were reports of alleged physical abuse, while half were alleged verbal abuse, including death threats. Half of the cases involved alleged denial of necessary medical care. Eighty per cent of the cases included allegations that the children were not provided adequate food and water. The agency has denied the claims as "baseless".
In other reports, Border Patrol agents reportedly used tasers to inflict pain on children in violation of policies prohibiting the use of the electric shock devices except in specific circumstances, like when a suspect is evading arrest or acting violently. One complaint alleged that a child was asked if he knew what a taser was before he was shocked with the device, "causing great harm".
Taken together, the documents allege a startling apparent tolerance for violence against children at a time when the US is seeing a significant influx of unaccompanied minors arriving at its border seeking protection from violence and poverty in their home countries. The ACLU says that it began requesting the documents after immigrant watchdogs noticed an increase in the number of stories of abuse.
Border Patrol
Gay Seminarians
Pope Frankie
Pope Francis warned Italian bishops this week to vet carefully applicants to the priesthood and reject anyone they suspected might be homosexual, local media reported on Thursday.
"Keep an eye on the admissions to seminaries, keep your eyes open," the pope was quoted as saying by newspaper La Stampa's Vatican Insider service. "If in doubt, better not let them enter."
The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the remarks, which Vatican Insider and Il Messaggero said were made at a closed-door gathering on Monday.
Francis's meeting with Italian bishops came just a day after a Chilean man who suffered clerical sexual abuse quoted the pope as telling him in a private conversation that God had made him gay and loved him that way.
The Vatican declined to comment on the report which touched off fierce media speculation that Francis was softening the Church stance on homosexuality. It has previously condemned homosexuality as an immoral disorder if actively practised.
Pope Frankie
Down Again
US Life Expectancy
The U.S. death rate rose last year, and 2017 likely will mark the third straight year of decline in American life expectancy, according to preliminary data.
Death rates rose for Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, flu and pneumonia, and three other leading causes of death, according to numbers posted online Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Full-year data is not yet available for drug overdoses, suicides or firearm deaths. But partial-year statistics in those categories showed continuing increases.
Just as important, there was little change in the death rate from the nation's No. 1 killer: heart disease. In the past, steady annual drops in heart disease death rates offset increases in other causes. But that offset is no longer happening, experts say.
The death rate for cancer, the nation's No. 2 killer, continued to drop. It fell 2 percent from 2016. Death rates from HIV and blood infections also declined.
US Life Expectancy
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. Justin Timberlake; $3,179,431; $145.19.
2. Pink; $2,486,015; $134.15.
3. "Springsteen On Broadway"; $2,171,069; $508.92.
4. Luis Miguel; $1,743,153; $96.45.
5. Kendrick Lamar; $1,489,005; $88.86.
6. Bon Jovi; $1,359,573; $97.84.
7. Romeo Santos; $1,351,928; $99.97.
8. Blake Shelton; $997,285; $78.17.
9. Harry Styles; $905,938; $76.49.
10. Demi Lovato; $898,787; $75.36.
11. Maluma; $897,704; $96.27.
12. The Killers; $896,782; $60.02.
13. Kid Rock; $855,888; $88.43.
14. Imagine Dragons; $840,226; $62.14.
15. André Rieu; $814,773; $85.05.
16. Kevin Hart; $739,766; $73.06.
17. The Script; $707,233; $56.54.
18. Lana Del Rey; $679,531; $77.30.
19. Miranda Lambert; $583,098; $58.47.
20. Bad Bunny; $569,713; $73.60.
Global Concert Tours
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