Hospital uses shady billing scheme to demand $109,000 from a heart attack patient.

NPR runs story about it Monday AM.

Et voila!

UPDATE: Monday, shortly after publication and broadcast of this story by Kaiser Health News and NPR, St. David’s said it was now willing to accept $782.29 to resolve the $108,951 balance because Drew Calver qualifies for its “financial assistance discount.”

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is considering new regulations on Google's search engine to address his concern that it turns up too many stories that are critical of him.

How about now? Now can we impeach this guy and move on?

If not impeachment, what about a 25th Amendment (sec 4) remedy?

Original story, posted Friday, July 27, 2018: On the evening of Thursday, July 26, 2018, an Ocracoke resident shared a photo on Facebook. It was of a “Trump 2020” flag flying aboard the M/V Frisco, a ferry that runs between Ocracoke and Hatteras.
Mayhem ensued. Politics can be ugly.

The photo made the rounds on Facebook and was shared to the NCDOT Ferry Division's Facebook page. I know I wasn't the only one, but in the interest of full disclosure, it's important to note that I brought the photo to the attention of Jed Dixon, deputy director of the NCDOT Ferry Division.

...

Captain and crew were suspended for seven days without pay.

This showed up in my FB feed today. And in the comments was this from a friend of a friend:

XXX XXXXX If you are interested in knowing WHY this happened on July 26....here you go: My family and I (group of 13) are on our way to take the ferry....one employee hears us speaking French and makes an unacceptable comment to the following vehicule referring about us as M**** F****’s....we do speak both languages and found this to be completely inappropriate and unacceptable....we reported the incident to the manager. The employee was visibly angered about the reporting....the flag flying was done later that day....intolerance does not have a place in 2018...food for thought....

As courts consider whether an Austin man can legally publish gun blueprints online for people to print their own guns at home, Michael Lynn says many plans are already out there, including a basic pistol called the Liberator, which he printed.

...

It took 36-hours and $10 worth of plastic to print 13 pieces that he assembled into the pistol. That convenience is what worries critics. But the quality of fully printed plastic firearms is another issue.

“People have test fired this gun as we’re about to and it blows up on the very first bullet that they put through it. A lot of people are holding this in their hand and that’s like holding an M80 [firecracker]. It’s just very dangerous,” he added.

We took him to Eagle Gun Range in Farmer’s Branch where owner David Prince wanted to see this printed plastic pistol for himself and agreed to let Michael test fire it. He added a one-inch roofing nail as the firing pin and then inserted a single .380-caliber bullet into the barrel.

On the range, we set up several cameras to see what would happen as Prince put that pistol in a vise and tied a string around the trigger to pull it from a distance.

After moving everyone back for safety, Prince pulled the string to fire the pistol and the gun blew itself apart. “First reaction? Wow. Pretty cool,” Prince said.

In slow-motion, the plastic pistol exploded in every direction. “I’m glad we used a string,” Prince said smiling.

Perhaps plastic pistols are a self-solving problem.

We were on a roadtrip Sunday AM and stopped at McDonald's for some breakfast. I ordered a chicken biscuit. We were a mile or so down the road when I opened the wrapper and discovered ... a biscuit that contained:

1. one of those strange McDonald's folded-egg-blanket things
2. a hamburger
3. with cheese
4. and grilled onion (not those little minced raw onions McDs usually uses)

None of which go on a chicken biscuit.

As a bonus, it was in a "Sausage Burrito" wrapper.

But, I was hungry. So, I tried it. And, it was magical.

I've looked at a few web sites which claim to list all the items on McD's "secret menu", but this isn't on any of them.

But, it rocks.

I feel bad for whoever was expecting to get their magic cheeseburger egg biscuit and ended up with a boring chicken biscuit instead.

In his first year as President, Trump made 2,140 false claims, according to the Post. In just the last six months, he has nearly doubled that total to 4,229. In June and July, he averaged sixteen false claims a day. On July 5th, the Post found what appears to be Trump’s most untruthful day yet: seventy-six per cent of the ninety-eight factual assertions he made in a campaign-style rally in Great Falls, Montana, were “false, misleading or unsupported by evidence.”

Everyone who had Swinging 'Sex Addict', collect your prize money!

The messages were posted by hackers on the darkweb last year and provided several damaging stories about Manafort. He goes on trial today, charged with evading tax on tens of millions of dollars from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine. Now, the texts have been published in their entirety on the ordinary internet, where they can easily be searched and read. Previously, Manafort had confirmed the authenticity of some of the messages to Politico. They appear to reveal the private face of the man who was Donald Trump’s campaign manager. It is not a flattering picture.

One daughter purportedly tells another that their father regularly made their mother have sex with a “room full of men”.

“dad tapes it all”
“Poor mom”
“Dad is a sex addict”

Yet more bizarrely, it seems both parents shared these painful secrets with their (grown-up) daughters in an attempt to save their marriage.

“he has too many skeletons, he can’t have a public divorce.”
“the issue was he wanted her to WANT to have the group sex and got upset she didn’t”
“Has mom been tested for STDs?”

I hope this is true.

No matter how much I read about it, stories about QAnon are always good for a morbid chuckle.

QAnon exists as a kind of parallel history which a "deep state" took over decades ago. An all-encompassing theory of the world, it's able to tie together and explain everything from "Pizzagate" to ISIS to the prevalence of mass shootings and the JFK assassination.

Many Q fans believe that President Kennedy was set to reveal the existence of the secret government when he was assassinated. They also believe President Reagan was shot on the deep state's orders, and that all the presidents since he left office – with the exception of Mr. Trump -- have been deep state agents.

The military, eager to see the deep state overthrown, recruited Mr. Trump to run for president. But the deep state, which controls the media, quickly tried to smear him through "fake news" and unfounded allegations of collusion with Russia.

Despite the deep state's best efforts, however, Mr. Trump is winning. Q is releasing sanctioned leaks to the public in order to galvanize them ahead of "The Storm," which is the moment when the deep state's leaders are arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Q's adherents have called this process "the great awakening."

The storm takes its name from Mr. Trump enigmatic comment last October about "the calm before the storm." Q began posting soon after, and said that the storm Mr. Trump referenced are a coming series of mass arrests that would end the deep state forever.

In QAnon lore, Mr. Trump is secretly working with special counsel Robert Mueller to bring the deep state down, and the storm is a kind of Judgment Day to in which the evildoers are punished and the faithful are redeemed. Q has repeatedly suggested that the storm would hit in the very near future, and has even said certain people would be arrested at certain dates. When those dates come and go without any arrests, Q says that they needed to be delayed for one reason or another, but that Mr. Trump still has the situation well in hand.

The GOP is a cult.

A good guy with the bad guy's nuts in his hand.

NPR published a list: The 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women.

I skimmed it. And of the bottom 100 songs, I think I've heard fewer than five. I've probably only heard of a dozen of the women listed in the bottom 100. I do better in the top 100, but not much.

I'm slipping out of touch.