Good. While the other investigations were necessary and appropriate, this is the one that matters most. The one that can actually punish them for their abhorrent behavior.
“The DOJ is merely the latest organization to take part in a two-year investigation of the U.S. fetal-tissue-trafficking industry — an investigation prompted by a series of undercover videos released in July 2015 by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). In part, the videos showed meetings between CMP members — posing as buyers from biotech firms — and high-level Planned Parenthood employees discussing the illegal purchase of fetal organs of aborted babies.
After the videos landed, the Left and its allies in the news media immediately began damage control, obfuscating and downplaying the story, often through the use of outright falsehoods. The DOJ investigation has been given much the same treatment, and most outlets have attempted to portray it as a purely political effort by the Trump administration to undermine Planned Parenthood.
HuffPost labeled the CMP videos “debunked,” Newsweek called them “a debunked anti-choice propaganda campaign,” and ThinkProgress went with “discredited sting videos.” Meanwhile, The Hill and U.S. News & World Report cited Planned Parenthood’s false claim that the videos were “heavily edited and misleading.”
In reality, though, there exists more than enough evidence to merit this continued investigation. Indeed, anyone willfully ignoring that evidence for the sake of defending Planned Parenthood is engaging in outright deception. Most important, there’s the fact that the videos that prompted this investigation — first by a Select House Panel, then by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and now by DOJ — were never actually “discredited,” “debunked,” or anything close to it.
To Planned Parenthood’s claim that the videos were heavily and deceptively edited, there is a very simple reply. When the CMP first released its undercover videos, it simultaneously released all of its unedited undercover footage as well. Anyone who distrusts the “heavily edited” videos is free to visit the group’s site, watch the full footage, and point out what exactly is so deceptive about the shortened versions.
More than two years later, not a single Planned Parenthood supporter has done so. What’s more, nonpartisan examination, as well as the research of a firm employed by the abortion provider itself, revealed that this footage was not altered in any meaningful way.
Even aside from that glaringly obvious flaw in the left-wing narrative, the substance of the videos is impossible to write off as somehow manufactured.”
“But in addition to consistently exhibiting what many see as negative attributes, Trump has also tried to keep his biggest campaign promises on repealing Obamacare, securing the border and cutting taxes, and he stayed true to his word with his pick of Neil M. Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. Now, his declaration of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital fulfills another pledge. No one who backed Trump as a candidate, with all his flaws, has been given much reason to abandon him.
Liberals seem to think the tax bill and other administration priorities will wake Trump country to the phony populism of its champion, but Trump’s voters always understood that business was going to benefit from having such an avowedly pro-business president. Really, the only supporters who might have cause for disillusionment are those who argued, or hoped, that once he assumed the presidency Trump would “pivot,” becoming “more presidential.” But that would probably be the one act that would cost Trump his base.”
A small article buried in yesterday’s paper noted a court in Orange County fined a “bioscience” company $7.5 million for buying fetal parts. The company is now closed down and/or leaving California.
The state, however, not wanting to let those fetal parts go to waste, donated them to a medical college for research rather than destroy them, as they legally should have.
Apparently Americans are not the only workers in distress over job uncertainty. The recent politically enforced trend to cut outsourcing is causing angst among Indian workers who are accustomed to having those good jobs. Some are joining other outsourcing firms, but some have decided to get entrepreneurial. A number of anonymous online counseling services have sprung up to meet the need. Some of these use networks of real psychologists, and some are using chatbots that mimic human understanding and empathy. One wonders if some day it will be decided that AI, which comes without all the drama and political baggage of human rights, is a better investment than messy humanity—and less dispensable.
Indians, like people the world over, tend to hide their mental anguish for fear of being stigmatized. That’s why many are embracing the convenience, anonymity and affordability of online counseling startups, most of which use human therapists. “Online mental health platforms are powerful, and real-time counseling can segue into a solution,” says Mridul Arora, a managing director at SAIF Partners, a venture capital firm that backed a startup called YourDOST. “Any new service needs early adopters and who better than young, tech-savvy IT professionals?”
YourDOST’s founders suffered their own career-related stress on their way up. Despite attending a top engineering college and acing his computer science courses, Puneet Manuja couldn’t find a job right away and was rejected by half-a-dozen companies including Yahoo! and Adobe during campus placements. Manuja’s classmates poked fun at him and he couldn’t share the agony with his parents or friends. Meanwhile, Richa Singh, who later became his wife and partner, was struggling with the suicide of a friend afraid she wouldn’t be hired during campus placement.
When the pair met years later at a global technology firm, they shared their experiences and talked about doing something to help those with depression and stress. YourDOST (dost means friend in Hindi) began as a blog, but the pair decided they needed to do something for people afraid to seek face-to-face counseling. The duo quit their jobs and set up a digital platform that offers counseling from a network of psychologists and psychiatrists. Where face-to-face therapy can cost thousands of rupees, YourDOST audio chats cost 400 rupees ($6.20) and video chats 600 rupees. Help is available 24/7, and the startup currently offers over 2,000 counseling sessions daily.
This summer, at the height of the outsourcing job losses, YourDOST also set up a toll-free helpline to comfort and advise anonymous callers. Senior psychologist Sushma Hebbar says job loss in the male-dominated industry “is not just an economic defeat but a status loss too.” Men break down during the counseling, and weepy students berate themselves for choosing engineering as a career path. They incessantly ask: how can I pull myself together and save my job? One young woman who lost her job now fakes her office routine so her parents don’t find out. A male engineer dismissed weeks before his wedding couldn’t bear to tell his future father-in-law.
YourDOST career coach Aditya Sisodia helps fired workers reinvent themselves. “The IT industry slowdown is stressing everyone between 15 and 55 years,” he says. Employees saddled with mortgages, car loans and kids’ student loans struggle to reconcile to the “new normal.”
Another husband-and-wife team, Ramakant Vempati and Jo Aggarwal, unveiled Wysa this January. The chatbot uses natural language processing to understand and classify conversations, then responds with compassionate solutions framed by therapists. The founders consciously stayed away from replicating quick-fix solutions offered in self-help books or the therapist’s couch approach. “The chatbot provides an empathic ear, listens without judgment and guides them to the positive,” Aggarwal says. “The conversations feel natural and real.” All counseling sessions are anonymous and free; the company makes money by licensing its AI technology to enterprise customers, global insurers and healthcare providers.
Last month, Wysa’s founders conducted a quarterly review of chatbot content and discovered that chats related to job losses and work had become the second most popular topic….
AJ @ 10:08 I have never understood why T Rump himself and The T Rumpkins hate McMullin more than they hate all the other rational and educated Americans opposed to Trumpian degeneracy.
So just who would have been better than Trump? And remember here was only one choice, Hillary. I would like to have you write about something other than Trump. I am certainly tired of your diatribes, I am not pro-Trump but he has done little to deserve the opprobrium you dish out.
Debra– “To Siri with Love,” is a woman’s memoir of the year her autistic son was fourteen (as was, of course, his non-autistic twin). He became infatuated with Siri on her Iphone and held long conversations with it. She felt that as a result of learning how to talk with someone he couldn’t see, he became a better conversationalist with his real family.
“Last week, Bloomberg published an article how one man had enough of fake debt collectors badgering him and his family to collect a phantom debt, money he did not owe. Andrew Therrien used his own money and time to track down these people and only found assistance from the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
You know what agency was missing? The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Instead of concentrating on fraud, the agency decided to target businesses already well-regulated that help the poor.
The Man Who Had Enough
Andrew Therrien is the man who had enough. He is one of the millions of Americans who found themselves wrapped up in phantom debt, or money they don’t actually owe. From Bloomberg:
Therrien had been caught up in a fraud known as phantom debt, where millions of Americans are hassled to pay back money they don’t owe. The concept is centuries old: Inmates of a New York debtors’ prison joked about it as early as 1800, in a newspaper they published called Forlorn Hope. But systematic schemes to collect on fake debts started only about five years ago. It begins when someone scoops up troves of personal information that are available cheaply online—old loan applications, long-expired obligations, data from hacked accounts—and reformats it to look like a list of debts. Then they make deals with unscrupulous collectors who will demand repayment of the fictitious bills. Their targets are often poor and likely to already be getting confusing calls about other loans. The harassment usually doesn’t work, but some marks are convinced that because the collectors know so much, the debt must be real.
Bloomberg noted the FTC has “broken up” 13 scams since 2012 after a call center India broke up after it was caught “making 8 million calls in eight months to collect made-up bills.” Unfortunately, officials have a hard time identifying “the original perpetrators because the data files had been sold and repackaged so many times.””
Rod Dreher on The Rot of American Party Elites…in case anyone didn’t already know….
….Contra my friend David Brooks, the contempt for expertise among leading Republicans did not begin with the Trump administration.
And for that matter, let us recall that it was the best and brightest of the Republican Party’s defense and national security elite that led the nation into its worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. Did you see Ken Burns’s recent Vietnam documentary? Did you see Errol Morris’s fantastic documentary The Fog of War, about Robert McNamara and Vietnam? Those were Democratic Party elites, but the most important fact is that they were American elites, just as the Republican elites that led us into Iraq. And it was American elites — Republican and Democrat — that led us into the 2008 economic crash, beginning with the Clinton-era deregulation of Wall Street, continued through the George W. Bush era.
My problem with Donald Trump is not so much that he’s a populist rebuke to the GOP elites (who deserve it) but that he’s a loudmouth incompetent who’s so bad at it — and his most ardent supporters let him get away with it. This tax bill, which he embraces, gives lie to any substantive claim that Trump is a populist.
Trump’s awfulness, though, should by no means excuse the Republican Party for creating the conditions that led to his rise. Nor, for that matter, should it let the Democrats off the hook. Here’s a very good analysis by Thomas B. Edsall, a left-leaning political journalist who is always worth reading, in which the writer chides liberals to quit living in denial about how they helped bring Trump about, and perpetuate his popularity. Shorter Edsall: liberals really have declared war on the way of life that a lot of Red America values.
Yes, the GOP is putrefying. So is the Democratic Party (as Edsall’s analysis reveals). The rot began long before Donald Trump showed up on the political scene. He is both symptom and catalyst, but he didn’t start the rot.
@12:48 Phantam debt?! That’s horrible! I had no idea this was going on, and the CFPB should be looking into it as well as the DOJ. However, I also think the payday loan industry is pretty much loan sharking made legal. They manage to get themselves exempted from all kinds of regulations so they can target the most vulnerable. :–(
Trumpkins take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’, Ricky. We’re routinely called irrelevant, lazy, perverted, dumb and Deplorable. You’re the one with the thin skin, buddy. Get over it. ;–)
And that is precisely why so many people downplay the importance of ‘breathless’ headlines. When it comes to this kind of gossip/news, if it’s really important today, it will be important tomorrow. So unless it’s an urgent matter, I’ll take my chances with old news that can stand the test of time….or at least a couple of news cycles. :–)
Wandering Views 
Good. While the other investigations were necessary and appropriate, this is the one that matters most. The one that can actually punish them for their abhorrent behavior.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454501/department-justice-planned-parenthood-investigation-not-witch-hunt
“The DOJ is merely the latest organization to take part in a two-year investigation of the U.S. fetal-tissue-trafficking industry — an investigation prompted by a series of undercover videos released in July 2015 by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). In part, the videos showed meetings between CMP members — posing as buyers from biotech firms — and high-level Planned Parenthood employees discussing the illegal purchase of fetal organs of aborted babies.
After the videos landed, the Left and its allies in the news media immediately began damage control, obfuscating and downplaying the story, often through the use of outright falsehoods. The DOJ investigation has been given much the same treatment, and most outlets have attempted to portray it as a purely political effort by the Trump administration to undermine Planned Parenthood.
HuffPost labeled the CMP videos “debunked,” Newsweek called them “a debunked anti-choice propaganda campaign,” and ThinkProgress went with “discredited sting videos.” Meanwhile, The Hill and U.S. News & World Report cited Planned Parenthood’s false claim that the videos were “heavily edited and misleading.”
In reality, though, there exists more than enough evidence to merit this continued investigation. Indeed, anyone willfully ignoring that evidence for the sake of defending Planned Parenthood is engaging in outright deception. Most important, there’s the fact that the videos that prompted this investigation — first by a Select House Panel, then by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and now by DOJ — were never actually “discredited,” “debunked,” or anything close to it.
To Planned Parenthood’s claim that the videos were heavily and deceptively edited, there is a very simple reply. When the CMP first released its undercover videos, it simultaneously released all of its unedited undercover footage as well. Anyone who distrusts the “heavily edited” videos is free to visit the group’s site, watch the full footage, and point out what exactly is so deceptive about the shortened versions.
More than two years later, not a single Planned Parenthood supporter has done so. What’s more, nonpartisan examination, as well as the research of a firm employed by the abortion provider itself, revealed that this footage was not altered in any meaningful way.
Even aside from that glaringly obvious flaw in the left-wing narrative, the substance of the videos is impossible to write off as somehow manufactured.”
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Why would we?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-would-we-abandon-trump-hes-doing-what-he-said-he-would-do/2017/12/08/2aae3682-db95-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html?utm_term=.72b4f7176905
“But in addition to consistently exhibiting what many see as negative attributes, Trump has also tried to keep his biggest campaign promises on repealing Obamacare, securing the border and cutting taxes, and he stayed true to his word with his pick of Neil M. Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. Now, his declaration of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital fulfills another pledge. No one who backed Trump as a candidate, with all his flaws, has been given much reason to abandon him.
Liberals seem to think the tax bill and other administration priorities will wake Trump country to the phony populism of its champion, but Trump’s voters always understood that business was going to benefit from having such an avowedly pro-business president. Really, the only supporters who might have cause for disillusionment are those who argued, or hoped, that once he assumed the presidency Trump would “pivot,” becoming “more presidential.” But that would probably be the one act that would cost Trump his base.”
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I hear on NPR that there is an explosion at the NY port authority bus terminal.
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You’re right, rkessler65. Apparently there was a small pipe bomb. Suspect, now in custody, was the only one injured.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/explosion-reported-port-authority-bus-terminal-article-1.3690939
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AJ @ 6:51 Yes, I think things turned out pretty much as we all expected they would.
https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/940223974985871360
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Some people like “Presidential”. Trump’s approval rate among those with post-graduate degrees is now 24%.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/12/08/how-low-can-trump-go/
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A small article buried in yesterday’s paper noted a court in Orange County fined a “bioscience” company $7.5 million for buying fetal parts. The company is now closed down and/or leaving California.
The state, however, not wanting to let those fetal parts go to waste, donated them to a medical college for research rather than destroy them, as they legally should have.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Frank Luntz’s Alabama focus group, and why they’re sticking with Moore.
Plus, another desperate (and losing) effort by McMuffin to stay relevant, even though he’s not and never was. 🙂
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/12/09/frank-luntz-alabama-focus-group-sticking-roy-moore/
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Apparently Americans are not the only workers in distress over job uncertainty. The recent politically enforced trend to cut outsourcing is causing angst among Indian workers who are accustomed to having those good jobs. Some are joining other outsourcing firms, but some have decided to get entrepreneurial. A number of anonymous online counseling services have sprung up to meet the need. Some of these use networks of real psychologists, and some are using chatbots that mimic human understanding and empathy. One wonders if some day it will be decided that AI, which comes without all the drama and political baggage of human rights, is a better investment than messy humanity—and less dispensable.
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AJ @ 10:08 I have never understood why T Rump himself and The T Rumpkins hate McMullin more than they hate all the other rational and educated Americans opposed to Trumpian degeneracy.
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rickyweaver,
“Sticks and stones…”
So just who would have been better than Trump? And remember here was only one choice, Hillary. I would like to have you write about something other than Trump. I am certainly tired of your diatribes, I am not pro-Trump but he has done little to deserve the opprobrium you dish out.
LikeLike
Debra– “To Siri with Love,” is a woman’s memoir of the year her autistic son was fourteen (as was, of course, his non-autistic twin). He became infatuated with Siri on her Iphone and held long conversations with it. She felt that as a result of learning how to talk with someone he couldn’t see, he became a better conversationalist with his real family.
Fascinating. Scary.
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I guess the CFPB is too busy shaking down large, evil corporations to do what they’re actual job is I guess.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/12/where-is-the-cfpb-to-protect-those-badgered-for-phantom-debt/#more-235328
“Last week, Bloomberg published an article how one man had enough of fake debt collectors badgering him and his family to collect a phantom debt, money he did not owe. Andrew Therrien used his own money and time to track down these people and only found assistance from the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
You know what agency was missing? The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Instead of concentrating on fraud, the agency decided to target businesses already well-regulated that help the poor.
The Man Who Had Enough
Andrew Therrien is the man who had enough. He is one of the millions of Americans who found themselves wrapped up in phantom debt, or money they don’t actually owe. From Bloomberg:
Therrien had been caught up in a fraud known as phantom debt, where millions of Americans are hassled to pay back money they don’t owe. The concept is centuries old: Inmates of a New York debtors’ prison joked about it as early as 1800, in a newspaper they published called Forlorn Hope. But systematic schemes to collect on fake debts started only about five years ago. It begins when someone scoops up troves of personal information that are available cheaply online—old loan applications, long-expired obligations, data from hacked accounts—and reformats it to look like a list of debts. Then they make deals with unscrupulous collectors who will demand repayment of the fictitious bills. Their targets are often poor and likely to already be getting confusing calls about other loans. The harassment usually doesn’t work, but some marks are convinced that because the collectors know so much, the debt must be real.
Bloomberg noted the FTC has “broken up” 13 scams since 2012 after a call center India broke up after it was caught “making 8 million calls in eight months to collect made-up bills.” Unfortunately, officials have a hard time identifying “the original perpetrators because the data files had been sold and repackaged so many times.””
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T Rumpkins can dish out the insulting names. See 10:08. However, their skin is as thin as that of T Rump himself.
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Rod Dreher on The Rot of American Party Elites…in case anyone didn’t already know….
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/rot-american-party-elites-republican-democrat/
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@12:48 Phantam debt?! That’s horrible! I had no idea this was going on, and the CFPB should be looking into it as well as the DOJ. However, I also think the payday loan industry is pretty much loan sharking made legal. They manage to get themselves exempted from all kinds of regulations so they can target the most vulnerable. :–(
LikeLiked by 1 person
Trumpkins take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’, Ricky. We’re routinely called irrelevant, lazy, perverted, dumb and Deplorable. You’re the one with the thin skin, buddy. Get over it. ;–)
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Unfortunately, never irrelevant.
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😀
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And that is precisely why so many people downplay the importance of ‘breathless’ headlines. When it comes to this kind of gossip/news, if it’s really important today, it will be important tomorrow. So unless it’s an urgent matter, I’ll take my chances with old news that can stand the test of time….or at least a couple of news cycles. :–)
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Another one bites the dust….@ the New Yorker. If this keeps up the only reporters left will be female or gay. :–/
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Even Lifenews didn’t catch what happened to the fetal parts: http://www.lifenews.com/2017/12/09/two-companies-that-sold-aborted-baby-parts-for-planned-parenthood-forced-to-close-down/
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Well Michelle, good things sometimes happen to Bad People.
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