Dustin Shillcox fully embraced the vast landscape of his native Wyoming. He loved snowmobiling, waterskiing, and riding four-wheelers near his hometown of Green River. But on 26 August 2010, when he was 26 years old, that active lifestyle was ripped away. While Shillcox was driving a work van back to the family store, a tire blew out, flipping the vehicle over the median and ejecting Shillcox, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He broke his back, sternum, elbow, and four ribs, and his lungs collapsed.
Through his five months of hospitalization, Shillcox’s family remained hopeful. His parents lived out of a camper they’d parked outside the Salt Lake City hospital where he was being treated so they could visit him daily. His sister, Ashley Mullaney, implored friends and family on her blog to pray for a miracle. She delighted in one of her first postaccident communications with her brother: He wrote “beer” on a piece of paper. But as Shillcox’s infections cleared and his bones healed, it became obvious that he was paralyzed from the chest down. He had control of his arms, but his legs were useless.
At first, going out in public in his wheelchair was difficult, Shillcox says, and getting together with friends was awkward. There was always a staircase or a restroom or a vehicle to negotiate, which required a friend to carry him. “They were more than happy to help. The problem was my own self-confidence,” he says.
A few months after being discharged from the hospital, in May 2011, Shillcox saw a news report announcing that researchers had for the first time enabled a paralyzed person to stand on his own. Neuroscientist Susan Harkema at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, used electrical stimulation to “awaken” the man’s lower spinal cord, and on the first day of the experiments he stood up, able to support all of his weight with just some minor assistance to stay balanced. The stimulation also enabled the subject, 23-year-old Rob Summers, to voluntarily move his legs in other ways. Later, he regained some control of his bladder, bowel, and sexual functions, even when the electrodes were turned off.
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Patient No. 4: Dustin Shillcox volunteered to have electrodes and a pulse generator implanted in his spine. Photo: Greg Ruffing
Facebook accounts run by Russian trolls repeatedly called for violence against different social and political groups in the U.S., including police officers, Black Lives Matter activists and undocumented immigrants.
Posts from three now-removed Facebook groups created by the Russian Internet Research Agency suggest Russia sought not only to meddle in U.S. politics but to encourage ideologically opposed groups to act out violently against one another. The posts are part of a database compiled by Jonathan Albright, the research director at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, who tracks and analyzes Russian propaganda.
For example, “Being Patriotic,” a group that regularly posted content praising Donald Trump’s candidacy, stated in an April 2016 post that Black Lives Matter activists who disrespected the American flag should be “be immediately shot.” The account accrued about 200,000 followers before it was shut down.
Another Russia-linked group, “Blacktivist,” described police brutality in a November 2016 post weeks after the election, and stated, “Black people have to do something. An eye for an eye. The law enforcement officers keep harassing and killing us without consequences.”
Five friends from Argentina celebrating the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation were among the eight people killed in Tuesday’s terror attack in New York.
Argentina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the deaths of Hernán Mendoza, Diego Angelini, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernán Ferruchi.
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The five men, all from Rosario, Argentina, died after a man drove a rental pickup truck onto a crowed bike path near the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
Another victim was identified as a Ann-Laure Decadt, a Belgian mother of two who died Tuesday night at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, according to a statement from her husband, Alexander Naessens.
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Five of these friends from Argentina died in terror attack
America be aware that The Trump Administration is attempting to kill the ‘Affordable Care Act’ by cutting funds for the enrollment period and cutting the length of the enrollment period. Also, cutting funding for a help line. – Mohur
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Affirming its disdain for “Obamacare,” the Trump administration on Thursday announced sharp cuts in programs promoting health care enrollment under the Affordable Care Act for next year.
Advertising will be cut from $100 million spent on 2017 sign-ups to $10 million, said Health and Human Services officials. Funding for consumer helpers called “navigators” will also be cut, from $62.5 million for 2017, to $36.8 million for next year.
About 12.2 million people signed up for subsidized private health insurance under former President Barack Obama’s signature law this year. The number currently enrolled is estimated to be around 10 million, due to attrition also seen in prior years.
Democrats are likely to accuse the administration of trying to undermine the ACA.
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Here is the information you need to enroll! From Mohur
Former President Barack Obama took to Twitter Wednesday morning to encourage people to shop for Affordable Care Act health insurance.
Obama’s rare appeal comes as his signature health care law is under attack by his successor, President Trump, and Republicans in Congress.
Obama’s tweet to his more than 95 million followers includes a short video, set to jaunty music, where the former president urges people to log on to the federal insurance exchange, HealthCare.gov, and sign up for coverage for next year.
“It’s November 1, which means today is the first day to get covered for 2018,” Obama says. It’s not clear where he’s standing, but the ocean is in the background.
The President’s tried and tested political defense mechanism is to whip up chaos to tip his enemies off balance and launch a fierce counter attack. He’ll also take cover with his ultra-loyal political base, rely on Republicans who are too cowed to repudiate him and fog an issue with alternative facts.
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Like clockwork, Trump sought Tuesday morning to discredit the probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and his campaign’s potential role in it.
“The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was “no collusion” and events mentioned took place long before he came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!” Trump said in a series of tweets. “I hope people will start to focus on our Massive Tax Cuts for Business (jobs) and the Middle Class (in addition to Democrat corruption)!”
Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was indicted on federal conspiracy and money laundering charges Monday, has a long history of ties to pro-Putin groups in Ukraine. He also has a long history of connections to Donald Trump. According to leaked texts sent and received by his daughter, Andrea Manafort Shand, the two pals were “perfect allies.”
The Trump administration has been working overtime to downplay Manafort’s role in last year’s campaign.
“Paul Manafort was brought in to lead the delegate process, which he did, and was dismissed not too long after that,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday. “Paul was brought on sometime in June, and by the middle of August he was no longer with the campaign,” then-press secretary Sean Spicer said in March.
Spicer’s statement was untrue, and Sanders’ claim was misleading.
Eight people are dead and at least 11 injured after a truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists and rammed into a school bus in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon.
The suspect, 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, is in police custody.
The first five people killed were identified as friends from Argentina in New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their graduation. One Belgian was also among the dead.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the incident an “act of terror.”
At least eight people were killed and 11 people injured Tuesday afternoon after a man drove a Home Depot rental truck down a bike path in lower Manhattan in New York City, striking several people, authorities said.
According to police, the driver went down the wrong way of a bike path on the West Side Highway, hitting pedestrians and cyclists. He then rammed into a Stuyvesant High School bus, injuring two adults and two children. (One of the children is in critical condition, a New York Department of Education official confirmed.) The suspect then exited the vehicle brandishing what police described as “imitation firearms,” later identified as a paintball gun and a pellet gun. A police officer then confronted and shot the driver, who was then transported to the hospital.
“This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror, aimed at innocent civilians,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a press conference Tuesday evening.
In Indianapolis, the director of the state’s largest organization helping people find Affordable Care Act insurance had to lay off nine of 13 staff members last month because the federal government had just taken away more than 80 percent of the grant that paid for their work.
In Atlanta, festivalgoers at the annual Pride weekend in mid-October were mystified that members of Insure Georgia had a table set up, because they thought President Trump had gotten rid of the health-care law.
And across Ohio, residents starting to phone a call center for appointments with coaches to renew their coverage are being told that the service no longer exists and that, for help, they should go to a website, a hotline, an insurance broker, a county health department or — if all else fails — their member of Congress.
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The Affordable Care Act’s fifth enrollment season faces a multitude of challenges when it begins on Wednesday. (Healthcare.gov)
Even as President Trump was on Twitter insisting that the indictment of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was meaningless because it involved activities unrelated to Trump or the campaign came news that former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos had pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with, wait for it, Russia.
The Manafort news drew the bigger headlines Monday morning — understandable given his high-profile role at the top of the Trump campaign. But, the Papadopoulos guilty plea — and the fact that he has been cooperating with the special counsel investigation since his July arrest — strikes me as significantly more problematic for Trump and his White House in the medium-to-long term.
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This paragraph from the FBI’s guilty plea agreement with Papadopoulos is incredible:
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“In truth and in fact, however, and as set forth above, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the Professor for the first time on or about March 14, 2016, after defendant PAPADOPOULOS had already learned he would be a foreign policy advisor for the Campaign; the Professor showed interest in defendant PAPADOPOULOS only after learning of his role on the Campaign; and the Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS about the Russians possessing” dirt” on then-candidate Clinton in late April 2016, more than a month after defendant PAPADOPOULOS had joined the Campaign.”
So, Papadopoulos copped to lying to the FBI about the timing of his contacts with Russians. In his initial interview in January 2017, Papadopoulos was insistent that he had reached out to his foreign contact “The Professor” (amazing!) before he had formally joined the Trump presidential campaign. He was arrested in July, pleaded guilty in October and appears to have been cooperating in between.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Five of these friends from Argentina died in terror attack
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