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babylonsister's JournalHollywood's Latest Diet Craze? Ozempic, the Insulin Drug With Vanishing--Literally--Side Effects
THE THIN LINE
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 Issue
Hollywood’s Latest Diet Craze? Ozempic, the Insulin Drug With Vanishing—Literally—Side Effects
Originally marketed for diabetics, Ozempic has become an It Drug in Tinseltown, even at $1,500 a pop.
By Emily Jane Fox
December 1, 2022
Under a rehearsal piano in a studio on the MGM lot in Hollywood in 1952, Debbie Reynolds crumbled. She was in the middle of preparing for Singing in the Rain, which would be her first leading role for the studio, alongside Gene Kelly, and the first time she’d have to dance, really. She was 19 years old, had three teachers, and was spinning around eight hours a day. It hurt everywhere, she wrote in her autobiography 60 years later, “most of all my brain and my feet.” She lay there, under that piano, until Fred Astaire materialized to coax her back up. She wasn’t going to die, he told her. If you’re not sweating, you’re not doing it right. So she shot “Good Morning” from eight in the morning till eleven o’clock that night. When it was over, she collapsed. For days, she didn’t get out of bed at her doctor’s behest. The studio had its own MD, who wanted to administer what they called a “vitamin shot”—amphetamines. Possibly, the same ones, Reynolds wrote, that “ruined Judy Garland.”
Since its inception, Hollywood has been the land where unrealistic beauty standards collide with financial pressure that hinges on its stars keeping thin, energetic, and always ready to make more hits. And there’s always been a quick fix or two. Since Reynolds’s era, the nature of the fixes have evolved from “vitamin shots” and “pep pills” to phen-fen to Adderall to clenbuterol—a medication used to treat breathing problems in horses. That’s to say nothing of the extra-medicinal aesthetic boosts by way of CoolSculpting, injectables, and Brazilian butt lifts, which suck pockets of fat from one part of a body and insert them into another, in order to create a generation of Instagram-age Jessica Rabbits.
It should have been no mystery, then, that when the people of Hollywood started dropping dozens of pounds in a matter of weeks, it wasn’t that everyone had suddenly started practicing moderation and logging 10,000 steps. It seemed like overnight everyone knew someone who was injecting semaglutide, whose brand name is Ozempic. The insulin regulator, developed by the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk in 2012, won FDA approval to treat type 2 diabetes five years later. It works by stimulating insulin release, which helps lower blood sugar levels and slow down food leaving the stomach, in turn making Ozempic users feel satiated for longer periods of time. When doctors noticed that patients using Ozempic were losing weight as a side effect of the drug, Novo Nordisk saw opportunity, conducting clinical trials on obese and overweight individuals to find that its drug did, in fact, lead to weight loss of about 15 percent of body mass in a few weeks or months. Soon the manufacturer started marketing a higher-dose semaglutide, called Wegovy, to treat obesity. Injections, which, mostly, people give themselves once per week, usually take six to eight weeks to cause significant weight loss.
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There has been no long-term study of the drug for people without blood sugar diseases taking the medication. And less of a guide for those tired of feeling tired or nauseous or injecting themselves or paying thousands of dollars a year to poke themselves with a drug people don’t know much about other than it seems to work. Because the drug is relatively new, it is unclear what the long-term effects could be, particularly if someone is not diabetic. How long can someone using it off-label stay on it? As Bravo’s Andy Cohen tweeted earlier this fall, “Everyone is suddenly showing up 25 pounds lighter. What happens when they stop taking#Ozempic ????”
more...
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/ozempic-hollywood-diet-drug#intcid=_vanity-fair-verso-hp-trending_0bd7dd26-1bef-4624-96c0-c146f9a7c8af_popular4-1
Call a whaaaambulance!
He's so full of poop.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1590896100654858242
Lyft and Uber are letting Christian drivers 'missionize' riders 'against their will': complaint
Lyft and Uber are letting Christian drivers 'missionize' riders 'against their will': complaint
Can Uber and Lyft survive if California's worker protections go nationwide?
Matthew Chapman
and Raw Story
December 03, 2022
On Saturday, OnlySky Media reported that rideshare companies Uber and Lyft are facing complaints that they are allowing Christian drivers to proselytize to unwilling passengers without consequences.
"There’s a belief among many evangelicals that there shouldn’t be any boundaries when it comes to sharing the faith," noted the report. "But there’s a substantive difference between using personal social media, podcasts, or TV shows to do it — where recipients can always block the noise or change the channel — and doing it as part of a ride-share company where passengers may not be able to leave the car and the preacher is literally the person in the driver’s seat."
According to the report, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is sending legal complaints to both Lyft and Uber calling on them to change their policies and ban this practice.
more...
https://www.alternet.org/2022/12/lyft-and-uber-are-letting-christian-drivers-missionize-riders-against-their-will-complaint-2658826834/
Uh, Politico? Biden Didn't Make Marjorie Taylor Greene "The Face of the GOP" -- Republicans Did
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/amanda-marcotte/104197/uh-politico-biden-didn-t-make-marjorie-taylor-greene-the-face-of-the-gop-republicans-didUh, Politico? Biden Didn’t Make Marjorie Taylor Greene “The Face of the GOP” — Republicans Did
by Amanda Marcotte | December 3, 2022 - 11:15am
— from Salon
"The widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics." This is famously known as "Murc's Law," named after a commenter at the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money who noticed years ago the habitual assumption among the punditry that Republican misbehavior can only be caused by Democrats. Do Republicans reject climate science? Must be because Democrats failed to persuade them! Did Republicans pass unpopular tax cuts for the rich? Must be that Democrats didn't do enough to guide them to better choices! Do Republicans keep voting for lunatics and fascists? It must be the fault of Democrats for being mean to them! Even Donald Trump's election was widely blamed on Democrats — who voted against him, to be clear — on the bizarre grounds that Barack Obama should have rolled over and just let Mitt Romney win in 2012.
Republicans are about to take power in the House of Representatives once again, and so, with exhausting predictability, we return to a Beltway narrative where none of the choices they will make with that power are their fault: It is somehow all because Democrats have failed to manage Republicans properly. Unsurprisingly, the latest example comes from Politico, which pins the blame for the rise of right-wing superstar Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene not on the voters who sent her to Congress or the GOP leaders who indulge her or the conservative media that celebrates her. Instead, Greene's popularity with Republicans is laid at the feet of Joe Biden and the Democrats.
"Biden world once ignored Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now it's making her the face of the GOP," announces a Thursday headline in Politico. Underneath it, Eugene Daniels and Jonathan Lemire write that the Biden White House has tried to turn Greene "into the poster child of the incoming House GOP majority."
But of course Biden had nothing to do with that, because Republicans had already done it. Republicans in her district enthusiastically voted her into office. Republicans gave Greene a standing ovation in response to her remarks claiming that school shootings like Parkland and Sandy Hook were "false flags." Republicans made her one of the top fundraisers in the House. Republican leadership is currently indulging Greene's demands to treat the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as "political prisoners."
snip//
There are two ways for the press to deal with these depressing inevitabilities. Option No. 1 is to say straight out that the GOP is run by a bunch of shameless liars who are waging war on truth and democracy. But doing that, of course, means giving up the pretense that "both sides" are the same. The other option is to stubbornly refuse to see the abundant evidence that Republicans are deliberately sinister actors and to go on depicting them as wayward children who honestly can't be expected to know any better. The former frame fulfills the purported mission of journalism, which is to tell the truth. But alas, we're probably in for at least two years of elaborate apologies and roundabout justifications and Murc's Law proving out once again across the media universe.
Inside the CNN newsroom cuts
POLITICO Playbook PM: Inside the CNN newsroom cuts
By EUGENE DANIELS and GARRETT ROSS
12/01/2022 01:06 PM EST
CILLIZZA OUT — CNN’s mass layoffs have claimed one cornerstone of its Washington coverage: Political analyst CHRIS CILLIZZA is among those who have been laid off from the network this week. People familiar with the decision confirmed the move, first reported by Variety, with Eugene and Chris Cadelago.
CNN would not comment on the cuts. Its Reliable Sources newsletter gave a rundown Wednesday evening, reporting that new network head CHRIS LICHT said in a staff memo that the layoffs “affect both our departing colleagues and those who remain.” No word yet on precisely how many members of staff were laid off this morning. Variety reports others affected include correspondents ALEX FIELD, MARY ANN FOX, ALISON KOSIK and MARTIN SAVIDGE.
Puck’s Dylan Byers reports that as a part of the cost cuts, HLN — the sister network formerly known as CNN Headline News — will “cease all live programming.”
On Wednesday, a swath of on-air contributors were told their contracts would be terminated. We’re told folks at the network have been shaken by the layoffs, especially in the midst of the holiday season, and that Licht is likely to address the cuts in a larger way to staff soon.
more...
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-pm/2022/12/01/inside-the-cnn-newsroom-cuts-00071616
Rep. Matt Gaetz's Associate Joel Greenberg Gets 11-Year Prison Sentence
Rep. Matt Gaetz’s Associate Joel Greenberg Gets 11-Year Prison Sentence
FLORIDA MEN
The former Florida tax official, now a prolific government witness, pled guilty to sex trafficking of a child, wire fraud, and stalking—but avoided 27 other criminal charges.
Jose Pagliery
Political Investigations Reporter
Published Dec. 01, 2022 12:13PM ET
Joel Greenberg, the corrupt Florida tax official who tried to reduce his jail time by telling the FBI that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) paid for sex with a teenage girl, has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.
The hefty sentence comes close to the decade-plus prison time that federal prosecutors requested—and didn’t seem to give credence to his value as a government witness in a dozen other investigations into the fraud and corruption.
Greenberg turned his suburban Florida tax office into a small-time criminal operation. He used his position of authority to prey on young women, play a gun-toting cosplay cop, run government computers to mine cryptocurrency, hire his friends as top managers, and give an Instagram model a no-show job. But it wasn’t until he was running for re-election and tapped a shadowy network of Republican operatives to slander a political opponent that he was finally caught.
snip//
But none of these cases is as big as the one that has yet to be filed: underage sex trafficking charges against Rep. Matt Gaetz.
more...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/florida-rep-matt-gaetzs-associate-joel-greenberg-gets-11-year-prison-sentence?ref=home
January 6 committee to discuss potential criminal referrals at Friday meeting
January 6 committee to discuss potential criminal referrals at Friday meeting
By Annie Grayer, Jamie Gangel and Zachary Cohen, CNN
Updated 8:17 PM EST, Wed November 30, 2022
CNN —
As the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack stares down a fast-approaching deadline to complete its work, members are scheduled to have a key meeting on Friday to discuss its final report as well as the possibility of making criminal referrals, multiple sources tell CNN.
A subcommittee of members is also expected to provide options to the full committee about a number of pressing issues including how to present evidence of possible obstruction, possible perjury and possible witness tampering as well as potential criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, according to multiple sources familiar with the committee’s work.
Also under discussion in the Friday meeting will be how to handle the five Republican lawmakers who refused to cooperate with their subpoenas, which includes House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
more...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/politics/criminal-referrals-january-6-committee
What would Harry Reid do right now? Threaten to cancel Christmas to save the country
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/30/2139240/-Biden-Schumer-Pelosi-need-to-channel-Harry-Reid-right-now-and-fight-for-our-futureWhat would Harry Reid do right now? Threaten to cancel Christmas to save the country
Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Wednesday November 30, 2022 · 3:16 PM EST
WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 08: Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) (L) shares a moment with Vice President Joseph Biden (R) during Reid's leadership portrait unveiling ceremony December 8, 2016 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The leadership portrait unveiling ceremony was held to honor the outgoing Democratic leader. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Harry Reid had no problem about threatening to cancel Christmas.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are staring down the double-barreled threat of multiple, critical deadlines and the knowledge that the House is going to be turned over to a raft of incompetent maniacs in a little more than one month’s time. The two leaders allowed their members to come back from the election on Nov. 8 and accomplish very little, then take the full Thanksgiving week—and the days book-ending it—off. That wasted time is now biting the whole nation in the ass, with the workload increasing—along with Republicans’ determination to thwart progress.
The number one thing Pelosi and Schumer needed to deal with started a few months ago, when House Republicans began announcing their hostage-taking intentions. The over-confident GOP announced that they would force cuts to Social Security and Medicare by refusing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling next year, now likely in June. That’s the promise the U.S. government makes to all its creditors and to the American people that the payments that have been promised to them—from troops’ paychecks to monthly Social Security checks to global debt servicing—will be covered. Not extending those guarantees by raising the debt ceiling threatens the entire global economy.
The threat that they would use this tactic was reiterated and reinforced. Democratic leadership more or less ignored the threat, implying that sure, it would be nice to deal with that, but there is just so little time and so many other priorities. Well, here’s a kick in the pants to that excuse of too little time, too much to do: Senate Republican leadership is now endorsing the House maniacs’ tactics, including the direct threat to Social Security and Medicare.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Mitch McConnell’s number two in leadership, told a Bloomberg panel of editors and reporters that Senate Republicans are right there with the House maniacs. They want to use the debt ceiling as a cudgel to force changes to Social Security—by “changes” they always mean cuts—and other programs.
The one side who would feel that pressure is the Democrats—meaning President Joe Biden and Schumer. So what should they do? Channel former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and cancel Christmas.
The threat would probably be enough to bring some recalcitrant members—possibly even some outgoing Senate Republicans—into line to get priorities taken care of. Like starting a budget reconciliation bill in the House right now that will include dealing with the debt ceiling, funding the government, and whatever other steps necessary for maniac-proofing the government. Yes, budget reconciliation bills take time, and can include all-night vote-a-ramas in the Senate. Do what Harry did, on multiple occasions: keep the Senate in session all night. Tell Senators they will have to be there all night.
Let them know that if they don’t play nice, they may have to be there until Christmas Eve, just like Harry made them do to give the nation access to health care. The Affordable Care Act passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, 2009, while a blizzard engulfed Washington, D.C. Threaten to do that again, this time to save Social Security.
Make sure the whole nation knows that’s what you’re willing to do: forego your treasured time off, during the biggest holiday of the year, to make sure the programs that are so vital will continue, unharmed. Make House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s nightmare of a leadership fight even harder by focusing the nation’s ire on the House Republicans.
Let Speaker Pelosi step away from the gavel having realized one last, huge achievement—saving Social Security.
Be like Harry Reid. Fight.
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