Before Republican JD Vance began targeting universities as the enemy of the conservative movement, the Donald Trump-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio leveraged a network of higher education institutions across the country to promote his book — and he made money doing it.

In the two years after the 2016 release of “Hillbilly Elegy,” his bestselling memoir of growing up in Appalachia, Vance visited at least 18 universities to give graduation speeches, lectures or political talks. For those visits, Vance was paid more than $55,000, according to records provided to The Associated Press by the colleges.

At the time, Vance, a graduate of Ohio State University and Yale Law School, spoke glowingly of education.

During an appearance on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” in 2017, he complimented universities on providing “high-quality talent” and “intellectual property necessary for folks to get their businesses off the ground.” In his book, he recalled watching an episode of “The West Wing” about “education in America, which the majority of people rightfully believe is the key to opportunity.”

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-business-ohio-education-186ca3f092a60603891b60e199a3fa02
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Who knew? Phony hillbilly is a hypocrite too. /S

A 1-year-old girl is back at home in Nebraska after receiving lifesaving treatment in Colorado, including a surgery with magnets that helped connect a large gap in her esophagus.

Harper and her fraternal twin sister, Gabriella, were born prematurely on Feb. 22, 2021, at 23 weeks. The newborns were delivered by emergency cesarean section at Box Butte General Hospital in Alliance, Nebraska, and were immediately flown to HCA Healthcare’s Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children in Denver, about 250 miles southwest, for treatment.

When Harper arrived at Rocky Mountain, she was diagnosed with long-gap esophageal atresia and pulmonary hypertension, or high blood pressure in the lungs.

According to the CDC, esophageal atresia is a birth defect, and there are four types of it: types A through D. Harper had what is referred to as Type A, where her upper and lower esophagus were not connected to each other, all of which made it unable for her to eat, drink and swallow through the mouth.

Dr. Steven Rothenberg, chief of pediatric surgery at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children, started consulting on Harper's case shortly after she arrived at the hospital. Looking back, he said he would have given her a 1% to 2% chance of survival.

Rothenberg said Harper had a gap that was about two-thirds the size of her chest, or about 3.5 inches.

"She was missing 80% of her esophagus," he said.

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/baby-born-23-weeks-special-surgery-fix-incomplete/story?id=84168792
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The surgery they did is absolutely fascinating!

Nurses at Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital are ready to exchange thermometers and scrubs for picket signs in a planned strike starting on April 25. To avoid burnout and to continue to offer care during the chaos of the pandemic, the nurses say they need more staff, better mental health resources, better pay, and more paid time-off. More than ninety percent of the 5,000 nurses who belong to the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement (CRONA) union at the two hospitals voted for the strike.

Rather than cave to their demands, Stanford had another message for them: Be prepared to lose your health care. On April 15, right before the Easter weekend and amid Passover and Ramadan, Stanford Health Care announced that in addition to withholding pay, it would also be suspending health insurance benefits for striking nurses and their families beginning on May 1.

Stanford isn’t outside of its rights to withdraw health care from picketing nurses, but it hasn’t been a common practice during recent hospital strikes. Workers at another one of California’s largest medical providers, Cedars-Sinai, are planning an upcoming strike, and the provider has not threatened to revoke their health care. The workers striking at Cedars-Sinai include nursing assistants, transportation workers, surgical technicians, and others. Workers at 15 Sutter Health locations in California also participated in a one day strike on Monday.

Stripping nurses of their health care is a “bullying” intimidation tactic that targets some of the most vulnerable nurses, says Kathy Stormberg, vice president of CRONA. Without pay and health benefits, strikers are left to pay for care completely out of pocket through the federal COBRA program. “Targeting those among us with cancer or who are single moms is a really horrible look for a hospital,” she adds, though she said she didn’t think the intimidation tactic will have a significant effect on the number of nurses who plan to strike.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/stanford-nurses-health-care-strike-lose-benefits-covid/
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If anyone out there is or knows of any travel nurses, please do not work for Fastaff. They are known strikebreakers. Thank you.

Here in the dirt of one of the world’s most radioactive places, Russian soldiers dug trenches. Ukrainian officials worry they were, in effect, digging their own graves.

Thousands of tanks and troops rumbled into the forested Chernobyl exclusion zone in the earliest hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, churning up highly contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 accident that was the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

For more than a month, some Russian soldiers bunked in the earth within sight of the massive structure built to contain radiation from the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A close inspection of their trenches was impossible because even walking on the dirt is discouraged.

As the 36th anniversary of the April 26, 1986, disaster approaches and Russia’s invasion continues, it’s clear that Chernobyl — a relic of the Cold War — was never prepared for this.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-health-europe-accidents-edcd5bc0e6bde3cbf6d7300bebc9343f
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I kind of like what Mr. Shevchuck says in the last paragraph

David Frodsham was a top civilian commander at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan when he “jokingly” asked an IT technician for access to YouPorn, the video-sharing pornographic website.

During his time in the war zone, Frodsham told one woman that he hired her because he “wanted to be surrounded by pretty women,” and routinely called others “honey,” “babe,” and “cougar” before he was ordered home after the military verified multiple allegations of sexual harassment.

“I would not recommend placing him back into a position of authority but rather pursuing disciplinary actions at his home station,” wrote one commanding officer when recommending that the Army order Frodsham to leave his post at Bagram Airfield and return to Fort Huachuca, a major Army installation in Arizona, according to a U.S. Army investigative file obtained by The Associated Press.

But when Frodsham returned to his home station in fall 2015, he rejoined the Network Enterprise Technology Command, the Army’s information technology service provider, where he had served as director of personnel for a global command of 15,000 soldiers and civilians, according to his Army resume.

By spring of the following year, he was arrested in Arizona for leading a child sex abuse ring that included an Army sergeant who was posting child pornography to the internet. Among the victims was one of Frodsham’s adopted sons

Frodsham pleaded guilty to sex abuse charges in 2016 and is serving a 17-year sentence. But records reviewed by the AP show that the U.S. Army and the state of Arizona missed or ignored multiple red flags over more than a decade, which allowed Frodsham to allegedly abuse his adopted son and other children for years, all the while putting national security at risk.


https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-business-arizona-army-sierra-vista-2dd2790f0b68117f561a46a47442135
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But wait, there's more! Read the article. It gets worse.

Liberty University is facing a $1.7 million lawsuit alleging that it violated a former student’s rights after she was raped by a fellow student in 2020.

Now, the accused rapist, who is also named in the lawsuit, has filed a counterclaim accusing the former student of defamation, asking that she be made to pay $1.3 million in damages.

Liberty has come under fire in recent years for its handling of sexual assault reports. It also faces a lawsuit from over a dozen students accusing the school created an “unsafe campus environment” and another suit from a former Liberty employee claiming he was fired in retaliation for raising concerns over the university’s handling of sexual assault cases.

The case centers around a rape that was purported to have occurred on October 30, 2020. The plaintiff, who is identified only as Jane Doe in court documents, claims that the defendant, Charles Tippett, was a friend who invited her to an off-campus apartment, plied her with alcohol and “roofies,” then raped her.

In the weeks and months following the accused rape, the defendant claims Liberty University discouraged her from reporting the incident to police or initiating a Title IX complaint, instead informing her that her only option was to address the issue through the university’s honor code, called the “Liberty Way.”

According to the initial complaint filed last November, the university then failed to take disciplinary action against Tippett and removed Doe from a university-sponsored internship in retaliation for her lawsuit against the school.

https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/after-suing-over-sexual-assault-liberty-student-faced-with-1-3-million-defamation-claim
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This scummy place again. And wait till you read the REST of the article!

In at least four primary races around the country, women have accused Republican candidates of domestic abuse and sexual violence. The details of the allegations are depressing, but even more depressing is the seeming reaction from GOP voters, which includes an apparent shrug and a growing belief that only liberals care about men hurting women.

The accused are running for a U.S. House seat in Ohio, the governorship in Nebraska and U.S. Senate seats in Georgia and Missouri. Eric Greitens, the former governor of Missouri, is trying to make a political comeback. He resigned in 2018 after a woman with whom he'd been having an affair claimed under oath that he had assaulted her and threatened to blackmail with her nude photos he'd taken without her permission.

That past scandal would be a political minefield to navigate on its own. But last month, Greitens’ ex-wife alleged in an affidavit related to their custody dispute that the former governor physically abused her and their youngest son before their divorce. Sheena Greitens claimed that in April 2018 “Eric knocked me down and confiscated my cell phone, wallet and keys so that I was unable to call for help or extricate myself and our children from our home.”

Moreover, she alleges that his “behavior included physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then three-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by his hair.”

Greitens has denied the allegations and says he loves his sons. By claiming in a statement that he hopes Sheena Greiten “gets the help that she needs,” he has hinted that his ex-wife is mentally unstable. In that same statement, he accuses his ex of plotting with “political operatives.”

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/sexual-assault-claims-should-disqualify-gop-primary-candidates-n1294546
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Family values, my sainted Aunt Matilda!

The Republican Party is waging an all-out assault on history and memory.

While there’s justifiable worry about the GOP’s attempts to erase factual accounts of history from school textbooks, there’s a parallel effort to gaslight and mystify Americans about recent happenings, as well. The GOP’s attempt to clean its blood-stained hands after effectively backing then-President Donald Trump’s notorious pressure campaign against Ukraine in 2019 is just the latest example of this shameless revisionism.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and performed what can best be described as a stand-up routine disguised as a sympathetic, pro-Ukraine rant as the country fends off Russia’s invasion.

“This is going to get stronger and rougher, and what really needs to happen is — Ukraine is not asking for American men and women to fight; all they’re asking for is the weapons to defend themselves,” McCarthy said.

Then he hit us with the punchline: “If we would have taken those actions earlier instead of waiting till after Russia invaded, they probably never would’ve invaded, had we done that sooner.”

The claims would be laughable if they weren't made in such bad faith.

https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/kevin-mccarthy-trump-ukraine-russia-biden-rcna24801

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., on Monday met for more than nine hours with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

An earlier attempt at a voluntary closed-door interview with her was derailed over a dispute about who was in the room.

The committee issued Guilfoyle a subpoena last month for information relating to last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol. The demand detailed how Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality who then worked for President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, was at the White House that day and spoke at the rally that preceded the riot.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in a statement at the time that the committee was seeking information from Guilfoyle on Jan. 6-related matters, noting that she also "apparently played a key role organizing and raising funds" for the mid-day rally.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/kimberly-guilfoyle-meeting-house-jan-6-committee-rcna24884
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What in the name of every god in the pantheon could they find to question Madam Screech about for 9 hours???????

‘Birthing while Black’ is a national crisis for the US. Here’s what Black lawmakers want to do about it

When Alma Adams’s daughter complained of abdominal pain during a difficult pregnancy, her doctor overlooked her cries for help. The North Carolina congresswoman’s daughter had to undergo a last-minute caesarean section. She and her baby daughter, now 16, survived.

“It could have gone another way. I could have been a mother who was grieving her daughter and granddaughter,” Adams told the Guardian, following a week in which the White House highlighted the crisis of pregnancy-related deaths among Black women. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Black women die at three times the rate of white women.

For Adams and other Black women in Congress, who formed the Black Maternal Health Caucus, the issue hits close to home. Last week, during Black Maternal Health Week, they talked about how their experiences and the work of advocates had propelled legislation, known as the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021, to fight a healthcare crisis that disproportionately affects Black women regardless of income.

The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among industrialized countries. Since 2000, the maternal mortality rate has risen nearly 60%, making it worse now than it was decades earlier. More than half of these deaths are preventable.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/19/black-mothers-birth-maternal-mortality