END IT DON’T MEND IT: Obamacare Requirement Blamed For Doctor Burnout.

The report published in the American Journal of Medicine found that the electronic health records (EHR) is destroying the relationship between doctors and patients. The Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom charges the Obamacare requirement that doctors use electronic health records has caused a surge of burnout in the medical profession, explains Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. “The EHR is causing doctors to leave their patients,” said Twila Brase, the president of CCHF and the author of “Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth About Electronic Health Records.”

“Congress forced doctors to buy and use computerized record systems to collect and report patient data to the government. And it’s wreaking havoc on their practices and their patients,” said Brase according to WND. Brase’s book is opening eyes to the problems of government interference in markets – especially the healthcare market.

More at the link.

THIS IS FINE: Venezuela Vice-President: Migration levels are normal.

UN figures suggest that 2.3 million people have fled Venezuela’s economic and political crisis since 2014.

Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez said the figures had been inflated by “enemy countries” trying to justify a military intervention.

She spoke as officials from 13 Latin American countries were meeting to find a way to deal with the mass influx.

Venezuela has lost 7% of its population to this “normal” migration of happy workers satisfied with life in the socialist republic.

DEEP STATE: Papadopoulos Court Docs Provide More Evidence Russiagate Was A Setup To Get Trump.

In the memo, Papadopoulos’s lawyers detailed the FBI’s January 27, 2017, questioning of their client, explaining that for two hours, Papadopoulos answered questions about professor Joseph Mifsud, Carter Page, Sergei Millian, the “Trump Dossier,” and others on the campaign. According to Papadopoulos, “[t]he agents asked George if he would be willing to actively cooperate and contact various people they had discussed.” Papadopoulos said he would be willing to try.

Yet when Mifsud—the Maltese professor who in late April 2016 told Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt on Hillary” in the form of “thousands of emails”—visited the United States just two weeks later to speak at a State Department-sponsored conference, the FBI didn’t even bother to have Papadopoulos reach out to his former colleague.

Instead, the FBI questioned Mifsud, then in the special counsel’s sentencing memorandum blamed Papadopoulos for the government’s inability “to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States.” According to Mueller’s office, Papadopoulos’ “lies also hindered the government’s ability to discover who else may have known or been told about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on Clinton,” and prevented the FBI from determining “how and where the Professor obtained the information [and] why the Professor provided information to the defendant.”

I previously explained why the special counsel’s claim that Papadopoulos’s lies impeded the FBI’s investigation doesn’t fly. Papadopoulos’s attorneys similarly argued in their memo that their client’s lies did not actually harm the FBI’s probe, adding significantly that “George was still a cooperating source in their investigation” at the time investigators questioned Mifsud.

That final point and the revelation in Papadopoulos’ sentencing memo that the FBI had asked the former Trump advisor if he would be willing to contact Mifsud—and Papadopoulos’ agreement to do so—exposes the FBI’s purported investigation into Russia as a sham.

Who does our counterintelligence agency work for, anyway?

GOOD TO KNOW: “If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer.”

You can do your bit to save the planet by grilling a ribeye tonight.

STEPHEN GUTOWSKI: Levi Strauss Forms Gun-Control Group with Bloomberg, Pushes Employees to Donate.

The clothing company said it would be partnering with Everytown for Gun Safety and Michael Bloomberg to form Everytown Business Leaders for Gun Safety in a blogpost on their website. It also said it would set up the Safer Tomorrow Fund, which Levi Strauss said would direct more than $1 million over the next four years to “fuel the work of nonprofits and youth activists who are working to end gun violence in America.” The company went on to say it would begin doubling the amount it matches for employee donations to gun-control groups aligned with the fund and pushed employees to use their five hours a month in paid volunteer time at the gun-control groups.

Levi Strauss said while they had already requested customers not carry firearms in their store in 2016 and had supported gun-control initiatives in the past, they felt they needed to become more politically involved in the issue.

I can no longer even imagine going into a Levi’s store.

VIDEO: Linda Sarsour Arrested at Kavanaugh Hearing: ‘This is a Mockery and Travesty of Justice!’

Exit Question: Did she break Sharia law by doing this?

STARBUCKS, ARBITERS OF APOSTASY: Ex-Muslim Customers Kicked Out of Houston Starbucks For Wearing Ex-Muslim T-Shirts.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Sounds like a religious-discrimination lawsuit to me.

VIDEO: Dems and Protesters Derail ‘Regular Order’ in Kavanaugh Hearing, Seeking to Adjourn.

Well, what else have they got, really?

SCRAPPLEFACE: American People: ‘No Thanks’ to More Kavanaugh Docs. “‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ the people said, ‘We enjoyed the first 430,000 pages, but we’re good’.”

IN OTHER NEWS, SCORPION STINGS FROG: Lying About Brett Kavanaugh’s Civil Rights Record.

WOW: Rahm Emanuel won’t seek third term as Chicago mayor.

BREAKING: Explosion Outside U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Patrick Poole has the early details, with updates on the way.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Conservatives Burn Shoes after Nike Makes Colin Kaepernick Face of ‘Just Do It’ Campaign.

Related: Nike shares dip as Kaepernick ad spurs boycott.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Claire McCaskill Said Hillary Clinton Was ‘Phony’ During 2000 Interview.

“UNEXPECTEDLY”: South Africa Unexpectedly Slides Into Recession For The First Time Since 2009.

LIGHTEN UP, FRANCIS: Kavanaugh Will Be ‘Illegitimate Supreme Court Justice,’ Trump Is a ‘Dictator in the Making.’

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: It’s KavaNOPE Week and Much, Much More. “Brett Kavanaugh, the president’s selection to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, is facing confirmation hearings this week. There’s really no way to stop him from getting confirmed, but the left will do as much collateral damage as possible.”

These days, the collateral damage is the point.

PRIVACY: US among consortium of nations calling for encryption back doors.

HMM: China’s ‘Silk Road’ project runs into debt jam.

During a visit to Beijing in August, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said his country would shelve three China-backed projects, including a $20 billion railway.

The party of Pakistan’s new prime minister, Imran Khan, has vowed more transparency amid fears about the country’s ability to repay Chinese loans related to the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Meanwhile the exiled leader of the opposition in the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, has said China’s actions in the Indian Ocean archipelago amounted to a “land grab” and “colonialism”, with 80 percent of its debt held by Beijing.

Sri Lanka has already paid a heavy price for being highly indebted to China.

Last year, the island nation had to grant a 99-year lease on a strategic port to Beijing over its inability to repay loans for the $1.4-billion project.

“China does not have a very competent international bureaucracy in foreign aid, in expansion of soft power,” Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder and research director at J Capital Research, told AFP.

“So not surprisingly they’re not very good at it, and it brought up political issues like Malaysia that nobody anticipated,” she said.

Tom Rogan opined last week that China’s “new aircraft carrier is all about political prestige, not military power.” But I have to wonder if Beijing isn’t dreaming of a little gunboat diplomacy.

LIAWATHA: Boston Globe unintentionally proves Elizabeth Warren’s ethnic fraud. “Spends 3,000 words trying to cover for her, but facts revealed destroy her claim to be Native American.”

The story, which had the cooperation of the Warren campaign, comes just days before the first debate in Massachusetts’ Senate race. Clearly, the Warren campaign is worried after even Native Americans who are Democrats criticized Warren at the DNC in Charlotte, and is attempting to put its story out there through a friendly source.

The article is a masterpiece of distraction, weaving stories from people completely unrelated to Warren as to their own experiences with Native America family lore or growing up as Native American in the 1950’s and 1960’s with bits and pieces of Warren’s story. The end result is an attempt to paint Warren as a victim of circumstance and the times she grew up in, as a means of explaining away the many inconsistencies in her story.

We now have the Boston Globe Corollary to Costanza’s Law: It’s not a lie if no one believes it.

WEIRD HOW THIS NEVER-ENDING STREAM OF ERRORS ALWAYS GOES THE SAME DIRECTION: Facebook ‘Employee Error’ Responsible for PragerU 99.9999% Drop in Reach.

THEY COULD HAVE WORSE PROBLEMS: At Boeing Factory, Unfinished 737s Pile Up. “Supplier bottlenecks threaten production at aerospace giant’s factory near Seattle.”

Boeing delivered just 29 of the 737s in July, though more than 50 mostly-finished jets roll off the production line each month. Company officials have said deliveries could slow in the third quarter but pick up in the fourth as suppliers get back on track. The 737 is Boeing’s most popular commercial aircraft and a top moneymaker that has helped propel the company’s stock more than 40% in the past 12 months.

The delays are due largely to two suppliers: engine maker CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric Co. and Safran SA, and fuselage manufacturer Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. Both companies have said some of their own small suppliers are struggling to meet demand.

CFM executives have pledged to catch up on engine deliveries that have been several weeks behind. Spirit AeroSystems said it has resolved problems and resumed on-time shipments to Boeing.

I’m thinking of all the new high-paying manufacturing jobs necessary to keep up with demand for Boeing’s jet.

MICHAEL WALSH: Life Under Socialism in Venezuela: Nasty, Brutish, and Stinky.

But other than making life pleasant, civil, and fresh-smelling, what has capitalism ever done for us?

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Hyperinflation is affecting how Venezuelans have sex. “One of the drivers for extreme inflation is soaring demand – in Venezuela there are far more people trying to buy goods from shops than there are goods out on the shelves.”

That’s shrinking supply, not soaring demand. But never mind that for the moment:

“In Venezuela, some people are using old-fashioned ways to avoid getting pregnant and when I said old-fashioned ways, it’s like the withdrawal method or the rhythm method, which is tracking your menstrual history to predict when you’ll ovulate.”

With this has come a rise in unplanned pregnancies, STDs and HIV, she adds.

Because contraceptive pills have become so expensive, there has been a spike in the number of women taking more permanent measures to ensure they don’t have any more children.

Zuniga spoke to a clinic in Caracas which sterilised 400 women in 2017: it reached that number by May this year. On so-called ‘sterilisation days’ run by local health programmes, the appointments for 40 free sterilisations per day have been snapped up, with waiting lists of up to 500 women.

“Before, the women that were sterilised in Venezuela were more than 30 [years old] and with more than three children,” Zuniga says. “Now you can find women [aged] around 19, 20, 24 that are looking to be sterilised because they can’t afford to have another [child], because they can’t find pills on the market anymore and it’s just desperation, they are desperate.”

I had been assured by the highest authority that socialist sex was the best sex.

THAT MIGHT SAVE A FORTUNE IN DEVELOPMENT COSTS: Lockheed Pitching F-22/F-35 Hybrid to U.S. Air Force.

“You’re building a hybrid aircraft,” David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who is now dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “It’s not an F-22. It’s not an F-35. It’s a combination thereof. That can be done much, much more rapidly than introducing a new design.”

The new variant — similar to one Lockheed is pitching to Japan — would incorporate the F-35’s more modern mission system and “other advancements in the stealth coatings and things of that nature,” according to a person familiar with the proposal.

“There’s a lot of potential in this idea,” Deptula said. “I’m not sugesting that we jump right into it and embrace it, but from the Japanese perspective when they are looking at and willing to invest in this kind of an alternative as opposed to trying to build an indigenous aircraft that’s not going to get close to what an F-22 can already deliver. It’s a smart move on their behalf.”

There are legal barriers to exporting F-22 technology, but if Congress were to loosen those, getting Japan on board would mean a bigger production run and ought to reduce flyaway cost per plane.