A friend of actress Demi Moore who phoned 9-1-1 after the star collapsed and began convulsing, told the dispatcher that Moore had “smoked something” that was not marijuana but “similar to incense and she seems to be having convulsions of some sort.” She also told the operator Demi was, “semi-conscious, barely.” The friend added, “She’s been having some issues lately with some other stuff, but I don’t know what she’s been taking or not.” “Is she breathing normal?” the operator asked. “No, not so normal. More kind of shaking, convulsing, burning up,” the friend replied. The recording captured the 10 minutes it took paramedics to arrive as friends gathered around the star, attempting to comfort her. The clip of that call, featured below, is just under two minutes long. Another woman was next to Moore as the dispatcher asked if the star was responsive. “Demi, can you hear me?” she asked. “Yes, she’s squeezing hands. … She can’t speak.” The city attorney’s office reportedly advised the fire department to redact details about medical conditions and substances to comply with federal medical privacy rules. Asked if Moore took the substance intentionally or not, the woman said Moore did ingest the substance on purpose but that the reaction was accidental. “Whatever she took, make sure you have it out for the paramedics,” the operator instructed. The operator asked the friend if anything like this had ever happened before. “I don’t know,” the friend said. “There’s been some stuff recently that we’re all just finding out.” According to AP, the 9-1-1 dispatcher told Moore’s friend not to hold her down but to wipe her mouth and nose and watch her closely until paramedics arrive. “Make sure that we keep an airway open,” the dispatcher said. “Even if she passes out completely, that’s OK. Stay right with her.” AP reports that the phone was passed around by four people, one of whom gave directions to the gate and another who recounted details about the mystery substance Moore smoked or ingested. Finally, the phone was handed to a man named James, so one of the women can hold Moore’s head. Due to some confusion at the beginning of the call, the ambulance was reportedly delayed by nearly two minutes. At one point during the call, Moore’s friend became agitated, asking, “Why is an ambulance not on its way right now?” “Ma’am, instead of arguing with me why an ambulance is not on the way, can you spell (the street name) for me?” the Beverly Hills dispatcher asked. By the end of the call, Moore’s condition had reportedly improved. “She seems to have calmed down now. She’s speaking,” the male caller told the operator. Moore’s publicist, Carrie Gordon, said previously that the actress sought professional help to treat her exhaustion and improve her health. Some speculate Moore may be suffering a sort of breakdown since her marriage to fellow actor Ashton Kutcher ended amid rumors of infidelity on the younger star’s part. Yahoo adds that, according to internet reports, the 9-1-1 call was placed after the actress had inhaled a dangerous amount of nitrous oxide, also known as “whip-its.” Following Moore’s collapse, her rep told ET, “Because of the stresses in her life right now, Demi has chosen to seek professional assistance to treat her exhaustion and improve her overall health.” She added that Moore, “looks forward to getting well and is grateful for the support of her family and friends.” The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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Demi Moore’s Friend Tells 9-1-1 Operator Star Smoked Something ‘Similar to Incense’
Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson denied Thursday that he was offered money to join Texas Rep. Ron Paul's presidential campaign after serving as Michele Bachmann's Iowa chairman.AP
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‘I Was Never Offered a Nickel’: Former Bachmann Iowa Chair Speaks Out on Joining Paul Camp
**Written by Doug Powers It’s been over a year since I first heard that the government was spending a half million dollars for a study of shrimp on a treadmill. It’s the first research project of its kind since the Surgeon General’s office during the Clinton administration commissioned a study of the effects of an elliptical machine on Robert Reich. The “Let’s Move” program for crustaceans must be going well, because the total expenditure on the study is now almost $200k over the originally reported half-million. But that’s still fairly cheap for a study being done purportedly to help define the effects of global warming on marine life : Reports of $500,000 of taxpayer funds to study a project that has shrimp running on a treadmill hit the headlines early in 2011. A recent report now shows that $682,570 in grants has been awarded to the research effort. According to the National Science Foundation (NSF) website, the money has been granted to the “Taking the Pulse of Marine Life in Stressed Seas” research conducted by biology professors Louis and Karen Burnett at the College of Charleston. The research page describes the professor’s “big question” as “How are human-made marine stresses affecting the marine life that we need?” The website describes the process of the Burnett’s experiments, “First, a crustacean is infected, by injection, with the same types of disease-causing bacteria that are commonly encountered in the wild. Next, the animal is placed on a specially built, mini underwater treadmill. Then, the organism’s vital signs, such as its heart rate and blood pressure, are measured (as a proxy for fitness) while it walks on the treadmill–similar to the way that a person’s vital signs are measured while he or she& walks on a treadmill during a stress test. Finally, the treadmill performances of infected crustaceans are compared to those of their uninfected counterparts.” Maybe shrimp, lobster and crabs would be a little less stressed if people weren’t grabbing them and throwing them on treadmills — just a thought. By the way, any shrimp that are unable to make the cut are donated to the White House . What these reasearchers are not discussing is what is placed just outside the tank to make the shrimp run so fast, and it’s kind of cruel if you ask me. Somebody get PETA on the phone: **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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‘Your Tax Dollars at Work’ Update: Shrimp on a Treadmill
**Written by Doug Powers It’s been over a year since I first heard that the government was spending a half million dollars for a study of shrimp on a treadmill. It’s the first research project of its kind since the Surgeon General’s office during the Clinton administration commissioned a study of the effects of an elliptical machine on Robert Reich. The “Let’s Move” program for crustaceans must be going well, because the total expenditure on the study is now almost $200k over the originally reported half-million. But that’s still fairly cheap for a study being done purportedly to help define the effects of global warming on marine life : Reports of $500,000 of taxpayer funds to study a project that has shrimp running on a treadmill hit the headlines early in 2011. A recent report now shows that $682,570 in grants has been awarded to the research effort. According to the National Science Foundation (NSF) website, the money has been granted to the “Taking the Pulse of Marine Life in Stressed Seas” research conducted by biology professors Louis and Karen Burnett at the College of Charleston. The research page describes the professor’s “big question” as “How are human-made marine stresses affecting the marine life that we need?” The website describes the process of the Burnett’s experiments, “First, a crustacean is infected, by injection, with the same types of disease-causing bacteria that are commonly encountered in the wild. Next, the animal is placed on a specially built, mini underwater treadmill. Then, the organism’s vital signs, such as its heart rate and blood pressure, are measured (as a proxy for fitness) while it walks on the treadmill–similar to the way that a person’s vital signs are measured while he or she& walks on a treadmill during a stress test. Finally, the treadmill performances of infected crustaceans are compared to those of their uninfected counterparts.” Maybe shrimp, lobster and crabs would be a little less stressed if people weren’t grabbing them and throwing them on treadmills — just a thought. By the way, any shrimp that are unable to make the cut are donated to the White House . What these reasearchers are not discussing is what is placed just outside the tank to make the shrimp run so fast, and it’s kind of cruel if you ask me. Somebody get PETA on the phone: **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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‘Your Tax Dollars at Work’ Update: Shrimp on a Treadmill
From ABC News : As he railed against Supreme Court justices, whom he calls “legislators in robes,” during his first event of his eighth day on his Iowa bus tour, Rick Perry was interrupted mid-sentence when Van Halen’s “Jump” started playing from his phone. “That’s my daughter, I’ll call her back,” Perry said as the crowd at Drake on the Riverfront laughed and applauded. Roll with the punches, Perry. Might as well jump.
The entire Jerry Sandusky scandal has been bizarre, with new tragic and horrendous allegations popping up at every turn. This morning, Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s attorney, gave a curious address to reporters following a preliminary hearing (a hearing that Sandusky canceled at the last minute ). In it, Amendola inadvertently instructed members of the media to phone a gay sex hot-line. Allow me to explain. Amendola discussed his doubts surrounding Mike McQueary, the graduate assistant who allegedly saw Sandusky raping a child. The lawyer said that McQueary’s claim that he told Joe Paterno and two university administrators about the incident, and that no one subsequently did anything viable to address it, is questionable. To anyone who buys into this version of what occurred at Penn State, the lawyer said, “I suggest you dial 1-800-REALITY.” Clearly, this was a statement made in jest to make a point — that Amendola doesn’t believe (or that he wants to cast doubt on) McQueary’s version of events. Watch Amendola sarcastically suggest that reporters call the phone line: Tommy Craggs and Dom Cosentino of Deadspin.com thought it would be fun to call the number to see if it’s in operation. So, they did and boy were they surprised by what they found. Upon calling, they were greeted with the following message (they posted the audio here ): “Hey guys, welcome to the hottest place for triple-X action. Get ready for bulging, bursting pleasure with [redacted]. Just 99 cents per minute.” Considering the nature of the allegations against Sandusky, you can file this one under “ironically embarrassing.” (H/T: Deadspin.com )
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Sandusky Lawyer Accidentally Tells Reporters to Dial Gay Sex Hotline
WASHINGTON (The Blaze/AP) — Many states have already banned use of hand-held cellphones while driving, but they are now being urged by the National Transportation Safety Board to ban use of all cellphones — meaning both hand-held and hands-free — except in emergencies, along with other portable electronic devices like iPods. The recommendation, unanimously agreed to by the five-member board, applies to hands-free and hand-held phones and significantly exceeds any existing state laws restricting texting and cellphone use behind the wheel. The recommendation posed to all 50 states and the District of Columbia would apply to all portable devices “other than those designed to support the driving task”. The board made the recommendation in connection with a deadly highway pileup in Missouri last year. The board said the initial collision in the accident near Gray Summit, Mo., was caused by the inattention of a 19 year-old-pickup driver who sent or received 11 texts in the 11 minutes immediately before the crash. The pickup, traveling at 55 mph, collided into the back of a tractor truck that had slowed for highway construction. The pickup was rear-ended by a school bus that overrode the smaller vehicle. A second school bus rammed into the back of the first bus. The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student on one of the school buses were killed. Thirty-eight other people were injured in the Aug. 5, 2010, accident near Gray Summit, Mo. About 50 students, mostly members of a high school band from St. James, Mo., were on the buses heading to the Six Flags St. Louis amusement park. The accident is a “big red flag for all drivers,” NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said at a meeting to determine the cause of the accident and make safety recommendations. It’s not possible to know from cell phone records if the driver was typing, reaching for the phone or reading a text at the time of the crash, but it’s clear he was manually, cognitively and visually distracted, she said. “Driving was not his only priority,” Hersman said. “No call, no text, no update is worth a human life.” The board is expected to recommend new restrictions on driver use of electronic devices behind the wheel. While the NTSB doesn’t have the power to impose restrictions, it’s recommendations carry significant weight with federal regulators and congressional and state lawmakers. Missouri had a law banning drivers under 21 years old from texting while driving at the time of the crash, but wasn’t aggressively enforcing the ban, board member Robert Sumwalt said. “Without the enforcement, the laws don’t mean a whole lot,” he said. Investigators are seeing texting, cell phone calls and other distracting behavior by operators in accidents across all modes of transportation with increasing frequency. It has become routine for investigators to immediately request the preservation of cell phone and texting records when they launch an investigation. In the last few years the board has investigated a commuter rail accident that killed 25 people in California in which the train engineer was texting; a fatal marine accident in Philadelphia in which a tugboat pilot was talking on his cellphone and using a laptop; and a Northwest Airlines flight that flew more than 100 miles past its destination because both pilots were working on their laptops. The board has previously recommended bans on texting and cell phone use by commercial truck and bus drivers and beginning drivers, but it has stopped short of calling for a ban on the use of the devices by adults behind the wheel of passenger cars. The problem of texting while driving is getting worse despite a rush by states to ban the practice, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said last week. In November, Pennsylvania became the 35th state to forbid texting while driving. About two out of 10 American drivers overall – and half of drivers between 21 and 24 – say they’ve thumbed messages or emailed from the driver’s seat, according to a survey of more than 6,000 drivers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And what’s more, many drivers don’t think it’s dangerous when they do it — only when others do, the survey found. At any given moment last year on America’s streets and highways, nearly 1 in every 100 car drivers was texting, emailing, surfing the Web or otherwise using a handheld electronic device, the safety administration said. And those activities spiked 50 percent over the previous year. The agency takes an annual snapshot of drivers’ behavior behind the wheel by staking out intersections to count people using cellphones and other devices, as well as other distracting behavior. Driver distraction wasn’t the only significant safety problem uncovered by NTSB’s investigation of the Missouri accident. Investigators said they believe the pickup driver was suffering from fatigue that may have eroded his judgment at the time of the accident. He had an average of about five and a half hours of sleep a night in the days leading up to the accident and had had fewer than five hours of sleep the night before the accident, they said. The pickup driver had no history of accidents or traffic violations, investigators said. Investigators also found significant problems with the brakes of both school buses involved in the accident. A third school bus sent to a hospital after the accident to pick up students crashed in the hospital parking lot when that bus’ brakes failed. However, the brake problems didn’t cause or contribute to the severity of the accident, investigators said. Another issue involved the difficulty passengers had exiting the first school bus after the accident. The bus’ front and rear bus doors were unusable after the accident – the front door because the front bus was on top of the tractor truck cab and too high off the ground, and the rear door because the front of the bus had intruded five feet into the rear of the first bus. Passengers had to exit through an emergency window, but the raised latch on the window kept catching on clothing as students tried to escape, investigators said. Exiting was further slowed because the window design required one person to hold the window up in order for a second person to crawl through, they said. It was critical for passengers to exit as quickly as possible because a large amount of fuel puddled underneath the bus was a serious fire hazard, investigators said. “It could have been a much worse situation if there was a fire,” Donald Karol, the NTSB’s highway safety director, said.
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Feds Now Want Nationwide Ban on All Portable Electronic Devices While Driving
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Mumia Abu-Jamal Calls in From Prison to Huge Rally Thrown by His Supporters
On Tuesday The Blaze reported that actor Alec Baldwin was escorted off an American Airlines flight after getting into an argument with a flight attendant over his use of an iPhone while grounded at the gate. Sharing his side of the story and issuing an apology to the other passengers on board, Baldwin penned a piece for The Huffington Post Wednesday titled, “A Farewell to Common Sense, Style, and Service on American Airlines.” Baldwin began: First off, I would like to apologize to the other passengers on board the American Airlines flight that I was thrown off of yesterday. It was never my intention to inconvenience anyone with my “issue” with a certain flight attendant. I suppose a part of my frustration lay with the fact that I had flown American for over 20 years and was brand loyal, in the extreme. The ticketing agents and Admiral’s Club staff have always been nothing but abundantly helpful to me, as I have flown hundreds of thousands of miles with the one carrier. My confusion began when the flight, already a half hour behind schedule, boarded, the door closed, and we proceeded to sit at the gate for another fifteen minutes. I then did what I have nearly always done and that was to pull out my phone to complete any other messaging I had to do before take off. In nearly all other instances, the flight attendants seemed to be unbothered by and said nothing about such activity, by me or anyone else, until we actually were pulling away from the gate. Baldwin asserts that other passengers, too, were using their phones while sitting at the gate but that he was singled out personally for scorn by a flight attendant who he later refers to as “a 1950′s gym teacher.” In this case, while other people were still manipulating their own phones, this one employee singled me out to put my phone away. Afterward, we still sat at the gate. I pulled out my phone again, while others did the same. Again, I was singled out by this woman in the most unpleasant of tones. I guess the fact that this woman, who had decided to make some example of me, while everyone else was left undisturbed, did get the better of me. “However, I have learned a valuable lesson,” writes Baldwin, adding that the level of service on struggling airlines has “deteriorated to a point that would make Howard Hughes red-faced.” “Filthy planes, barely edible meals, cuts in jet service to less-traveled locations” combine to create what Baldwin calls an experience that is as “inelegant as possible.” And while Baldwin maintains that most of the flight attendants he’s encountered “still have some remnant of the old idea of service,” there are also many who “walk the aisles of an airplane with a whistle around their neck and a clipboard in their hands” and have made flying “a Greyhound bus experience.” He closes with an additional apology to his fellow travelers and shares the lessons learned from his experience: The lesson I’ve learned is to keep my phone off when the 1950′s gym teacher is on duty. That was my fault there, even though this trip was quite a bit different from so many others. But it is sad, I think, that you’ve got to fly overseas today in order to bring back what has been thrown overboard by US carriers in terms of common sense, style, and service. Regardless of one’s opinion of Alec Baldwin’s politics, or what really happened on that plane (earlier reports indicate that Baldwin was in fact playing an iPhone game which he refused to turn off after being asked to do so multiple times), many out there might agree with his take on the airline industry’s deterioration. From paying upwards of $30 per carry-on bag and even more for checked-luggage, to being forced to purchase a can of soda or even a packet of peanuts (if one is lucky enough to find them on a plane these days) in some instances, the friendly skies have indeed become a lot less friendly.
