WhatTheBuck

CBS News just covered the Arlington Cemetery skirmish. Then they moved on to a new Harris campaign ad that ties Trump to Project 2025.

What does Shapiro’s schedule look like? Is he joining them in Pittsburgh?

I can’t imagine he’d want to be buried there alongside all those suckers and losers.

Pics of stepdaughter and her friend?

It was originally scheduled for the 19th then got pushed back a day because they didn’t know about Juneteenth when they scheduled it. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/20/politics/donald-trump-rally-tulsa-coronavirus/index.html

Elon is out there.

And prohibited.

They covered it on NPR this morning.

He never met Donald Trump.

Arkansas Touts 'Pro Life' Stance But Faces High Maternal, Infant Mortality https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/08/27/arkansas-maternal-mortality-rate-abortion-ban/ https://archive.ph/8zoOw This state calls itself the ‘most pro-life.’ But moms there keep dying. Giving birth in Arkansas, especially its rural southeast, comes with more risk and less care. The challenges feel acute for someone like doula Hajime White. WARREN, Ark. — The pregnant teen had already picked out a name for her baby, already felt him kick, which made the sight of blood in her underwear all the more frightening as she was getting ready for bed that fall night. Her mother, Ronica Lawson, called for an ambulance to take them to the hospital five minutes away. As the sirens blared and the EMTs tried to reassure 15-year-old Sa’Ryiah Lincoln, bad news crackled out of the radio. Head to the next county, the EMTs were told. The local hospital no longer delivered babies. In a state that touts itself as “the most pro-life state in the country,” where abortion is prohibited except to save the life of the mother, timber country in southeast Arkansas is an especially dangerous place to give birth. Arkansas already has one of the nation’s worst maternal mortality rates, and mothers in this area die at a rate exceeding the state average. Ninety-two percent of recent maternal deaths were preventable, a state review committee found. In November, two hospitals in the region abruptly closed their birthing units, sending patients like Sa’Ryiah scrambling to find a new obstetrician. And now she was in an ambulance at midnight, speeding through dark pine forests on a tense half-hour trip to a bigger hospital. Doctors were able to get her stabilized and eventually sent her home. With a ride that long, “anything could have happened,” said Hajime White, one of the teen’s doulas. “When hospitals are turning you away and you have to go on to the next one, any complication can develop whether you’re in an ambulance or not. You’re putting the mother at risk and the baby at risk.” Since Arkansas banned nearly all abortions after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, doctors and others have sounded the alarm on what they say is a deepening crisis in maternal health. They point to other markers, too, particularly the state’s very high rates of teen pregnancy, infant mortality and food insecurity. “If we really say to the world we’re pro-life, we need to put our money where our mouth is and make sure these women are treated and have the care they need,” said Republican state Rep. Aaron Pilkington, an abortion opponent who has led a push for legislation and funding to improve outcomes. This spring, facing pressure from business leaders and the medical community, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched an initiative to address maternal health, an issue that she acknowledged “we’ve ignored for far too long.” Yet she declined to support extending Medicaid postpartum coverage to a year from 60 days, saying the state’s existing insurance system was enough. Arkansas will soon be one of only two states not adopting such coverage. Though teen birth rates are falling nationally, federal data shows the statistic for Arkansas is almost twice the U.S. average. Lack of access to contraception is a major factor; the rate at which teens in Arkansas have unprotected sex is 75 percent higher, according to a report from the nonprofit Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. Lawmakers generally have made it harder for teens to get birth control, the advocacy group’s report noted. School-based clinics need parental consent and can’t use state funds to provide contraceptives. The state does not require sex education in schools — if taught, lessons must stress abstinence — but an hour of adoption awareness instruction is mandated for grades six through 12. Topics to be covered include “the reasons adoption is preferable to abortion.” In a recent public forum, when a moderator raised the “controversial” topic of sex ed, Arkansas’ education secretary, Jacob Oliva, replied that the state will be reviewing its health education standards. “Are they robust?” he said. “Are they doing a good job?” He said about 600 teen moms are in Arkansas schools every year. “Is that a number or metric we think is too high or too low? Those are some of the questions we need to ask.” Last summer was when Sa’Ryiah began spending a lot of time outside with other kids — particularly one teen boy — in her neighborhood of drab public housing duplexes. Her mother noticed and was determined to get her a long-acting contraceptive implant, but said she could not find a doctor locally to do the procedure. She finally took Sa’Ryiah to Little Rock — 180 miles round-trip. At a hospital there, she learned that her daughter was already seven weeks pregnant. With an infant tucked under one arm, the governor in March signed an “Executive Order to Support Moms, Protect Babies and Improve Maternal Health.” E.O. 24-03 hailed Arkansas as “the most pro-life state in the country.” Sanders’s administration has embraced that distinction since Americans United for Life, an antiabortion group based in Washington, first bestowed the title three years ago. Its rankings reflect “states’ protection of life from conception to natural death,” with a strong focus on abortion. Arkansas has taken some measures aimed at improving maternal health, planning a midwife certification program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and requiring Medicaid to cover long-acting contraception for postpartum mothers. Other efforts have lagged. Officials hoped to have hospitals throughout the state run home-visit programs for at-risk mothers. Only four have been approved, with one expected to launch before the year ends. While Sanders didn’t endorse expanded postpartum coverage through Medicaid, she has said she wants to do a better job of educating women before and after giving birth about existing resources and insurance options. “The solution is not more government programs. The solution is getting women to take advantage of the programs we already have,” she said in issuing her directive. Advocates worry that her overall focus on cutting taxes signals that she may not be willing to fund any significant projects associated with reproductive health. A special panel is expected to give Sanders its recommendations next month. Just as Sanders unveiled her maternal health-care plan, Sa’Ryiah’s blood pressure was rising. The teen was still days from her due date, but her doctor decided to induce because of her risk of developing preeclampsia, a condition that can lead to serious, even fatal complications. Baby Kaydence slipped into the world at 4:59 p.m. on March 7 — 7 pounds, 4 ounces, with a full head of hair. At the hospital — the bigger one in Monticello — the nurses held him up, still covered in blood and amniotic fluid. “So slimy,” Sa’Ryiah thought. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hold him. Later, though, after they cleaned him and laid him on her chest, she cried. Kaydence’s safe arrival was the first real victory for White after a year of disappointments and grief. The previous winter, a Warren woman named Megan Patterson died shortly after having her fifth child. Patterson, 32, had experienced swelling that persisted after she went home from the hospital. “She should never have been discharged,” said her mother, Patsy Newton. The death certificate listed acute respiratory failure, with obesity and heart and chronic kidney disease as contributing factors. Officials at the facility where she gave birth, now called Baptist Health Medical Center-Drew County, declined to comment. White hadn’t been involved in Patterson’s prenatal care. Even so, she was devastated by her death. In tears, she called her mentor at the organization where she’d trained as a doula. “I boohooed,” she said. “I felt helpless. I wish somebody would have reached out to me and I might could have helped her. Maybe she would have still been here.” Obstetrician Kara Worley, who has worked at each of the local hospitals that shuttered their delivery units, says women such as Patterson require complex care. “I can’t remember the last time I had a patient come in healthy, young, with no medical problems and have a baby and go home,” Worley said. Those she sees routinely suffer chronic health problems, from heart conditions and undiagnosed diabetes to morbid obesity. She says change will take generations. Worley and reproductive health advocates believe the state’s abortion ban has hurt hospitals’ ability to recruit and retain obstetricians at a time when the number of facilities delivering babies has dropped from 39 in 2020 to 35 today. Nearly half of the counties in Arkansas now lack a hospital or birth center offering obstetric care. “From where I stand, [lawmakers] haven’t done anything except make it harder to care for the patient,” she said, recounting a case in which she was required to do unnecessary testing that delayed treatment. The patient had an ectopic pregnancy — which ruptured and required emergency surgery, she said. At the 25-bed Bradley County Medical Center, chief executive Leslie Huitt closed the delivery unit after it dwindled to just one full-time family practice obstetrician.A study showed that the unit was losing $1 million annually. No state aid was available, Huitt said, and she found no partners to apply for a federal grant. The decision was all the more painful since Huitt had given birth to her three children there. “Maternal care in Arkansas is starting to be a hot topic,” she said this spring. “But we couldn’t get the attention and help we needed fast enough to save us. Ultimately it was a question of do we want an OB unit, or do we want a hospital at all?” “It feels like tumbleweeds are coming through town,” White said. “When things you grew up with and are familiar with leave in the blink of an eye, it’s almost like a death.” At the baby shower and graduation ceremony, White filled a community room at the housing authority with purple and white balloons. The mayor and several reproductive health advocates came, and White counted 22 adults and little ones by the end. Though some of the moms who’d promised to attend were absent, White considered the event a success. Not long after, she stopped by Lawson’s to check on Sa’Ryiah and the baby. The last few weeks had not been easy on the new mom. When Kaydence cried, she cried. Gwen had come more than once to try to calm them both and teach Sa’Ryiah how to properly swaddle. White cooed over the infant and then gave Sa’Ryiah two small glass jars. They held the remnants of her placenta, which the doula had dried, ground into a powder and packed into capsules — a practice of traditional medicine that some believe has health benefits for mother and baby. “Now you have your show-and-tell,” she told the astonished teen. Sa’Ryiah was about to head back to high school, and that was making her anxious. She did not want to leave Kaydence behind and was worried she would again be singled out and bullied. She’d kept up remotely with her schoolwork — World History, English, Survey of Business and a test prep class — and her mother was determined she would graduate. “She’s walking that stage,” Lawson said. “Don’t let the baby be a hinder to finishing it,” White told her. She had gotten her diploma after becoming pregnant, she said. So had Gwen. “Before you know it, it will be time for you to graduate.” As it turned out, Sa’Ryiah would not be the only new mom. At her school of about 500 students, the principal said, 12 were pregnant or had just had a baby.

Actually, they passed a bill during a special legislative session that extended the filing deadline to Aug 31 but the Dems chose to stick with the roll call vote to meet the original deadline just to avoid any potential GOP skullduggery. They probably didn’t have to but you can’t blame them. Better safe then sorry and with Ohio Republicans you can never be sure. https://apnews.com/article/biden-ohio-ballot-48601b3522a42e2680fe40b416d0421d

I heard on the radio this morning that Ohio is honoring his request and removing him from the ballot. No surprise there.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/special-counsel-re-indicts-trump-supreme-court-immunity-decision/ Special counsel reindicts Trump with narrower set of accusations after Supreme Court immunity decision Washington — Special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment against former President Donald Trump Tuesday in which he again accused Trump of resisting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election. Smith narrowed the allegations after a landmark Supreme Court ruling on presidential power earlier this year. The new charging document is based on a more refined set of allegedly criminal acts after the Supreme Court ruled Trump was immune from prosecution for some of the conduct included in Smith's original 2023 indictment. This is a developing story and will be updated.

Is that entire article based on her saying she’d sign the border bill that Trump killed?

Yeah, they finally got around to doing that.

Lulz. Next you’ll tell me Paul really is dead.

The walrus was NOT Paul!

This is some excellent work.

And who isn’t a heroin addict.

Definitely shot backstage at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Those were all guests of his last week when he was broadcasting in Chicago after the DNC. The Melania lookalike is Laura Benanti who had a recurring role on the show during the Trump admin. I posted her segment from last Tuesday in the DNC thread but here it is in case you missed it:

Love those. Used to have them all the time as a kid. I haven’t had a box in years.

I had one of those. It was pretty cool except when you pressed down on the plunger too long and wound up with plastic shavings in your sno-cone.

He’ll tell you in two weeks. It’s going to be tremendous. You’re going to love it.

Vicki Lewis. Definitely doable.