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Author: Mary Chastain

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Mary Chastain

Mary is the resident libertarian. She covers stories in every vertical, but her favorite thing to do is take on the media. She saw its bias against the right when she was a socialist.

Mary loves the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Blackhawks, tennis, cats, Oxford comma, Diet Coke, and needlework.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has revised the second quarter GDP growth to reflect 3%, up from the 2.6% growth initially released. This gives the U.S. its strongest quarter since 2015. From The Wall Street Journal:
Growth in the second quarter was “above the trend for the expansion” but came “after a below-trend pace” in the first quarter, said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, in a note to clients. “The trend is probably still not much more than 2%,” he said.

Ready for another bombshell in the case of a former IT aide to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)? Turns out that Imran Awan still has an active email account connected to Rep. André Carson (D-IN), even though he's been banned from the network since the Capital police named him in an investigation concerning stolen equipment and breaching the House IT system.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis announced late on Tuesday he will begin a review of transgender military policies in conjunction with the guidance President Donald Trump sent him last week. It's very important to remember that when Trump sent the Pentagon the transgender policies, he gave Mattis a lot of leeway to make changes and recommendations.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump boarded Air Force One this morning (yes, I covered the left losing its mind over her freaking shoes) to survey the damage and speak to Texas officials about recovery. From Fox News:
“We want to do it better than ever before,” Trump said of the recovery. “We want to be looked at in five years or ten years from now as this is the way to do it.”

STOP THE PRESSES!!!! First Lady Melania Trump had the NERVE to wear stilettos as she boarded Air Force One to head to Texas with President Donald Trump. The way people acted you'd think she's the one who ordered Hurricane Harvey to devastate the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Kathy Griffin appeared on Australian TV today and told the hosts she's no longer sorry for posting a picture of her holding the decapitated head of President Donald Trump. She said:
"I am no longer sorry, the whole outrage was B.S., the whole thing got so blown out of proportion and I lost everybody. Like, I had Chelsea Clinton tweeting against me. I had friends, Debra Messing from 'Will and Grace,' tweeting against me."

The Pentagon has confirmed that North Korea fired a missile over Japan early Tuesday morning local time. From ABC News:
"We assess North Korea conducted a missile launch within the last 90 minutes," Col. Rob Manning, director of press operations at the Department of Defense, said Monday evening in a statement. "We can confirm that the missile launch by North Korea flew over Japan. We are in the process of assessing this launch.

Northwell Health, New York's largest hospital network, has decided to stop selling Obamacare plans over....you guessed it...huge losses. From The New York Post:
Northwell Health (the former North Shore-Long Island Jewish Medical Center network ) blamed a flawed provision in the Affordable Care Act — and the lack of action in Washington to fix it — as the culprits for winding down its CareConnect insurance company.

The Telegraph revealed that authorities conducted a mock terrorist attack on the UK Parliament earlier this year that exposed actual terrorists could easily break in and kill at least 100 Members of Parliament in a matter of five minutes:
In a simulated attack, which took place in the middle of the night, officers posing as extremists used a boat to gain access from the river. They then navigated the corridors and stormed the House of Commons chamber in an exercise that could have caused mass casualties if replicated in real life.

The horror movie genre has lost another great. First we lose George Romero. Now the Los Angeles County Coroner announced that Tobe Hooper is dead at the age of 74. They did not releases the cause of death. Hooper shot to fame with Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974. He followed that up with the TV movie Salem's Lot in 1979, based on the Stephen King novel, and Poltergeist in 1982.