Hasta La Gadget!

On Monday, President Trump held his first full cabinet meeting, and his subordinates just couldn’t wait to admire the man in what was a very bizarre show.

Each cabinet member took turns heaping praise onto the president, who certainly 100 percent requested that they do that. OK, we don’t know that he did this for sure, but 1,000 percent yes he did.

But I know you’re asking, “Andy, how do I learn how to exalt, lionize and hail people I know just like they do in North Kor― uh, I mean the White House?” 

It’s easy, here are a few examples to get you started!

Your dentist

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your patient. From the second you wrapped that spit-bib around my neck, this chair has felt like the America I remember growing up in. Never have teeth been so eager to receive a drill and a filling as mine have received yours. You’re not just filling cavities, Doctor … you’re filling a void in the hearts of the American people.”

Your doctor

“Doctor, before I turn my head and cough, it’s important that you know something. Thank you. Simply, thank you. Being a patient of yours has been a great privilege, perhaps the single great privilege any human has ever been bestowed save for this great nation. Like that jar of tongue depressors, we’re all very united. Many doctors have come before you, to be sure, but I dare you to find me a doctor that has breathed so much life into the world. When the America turns its head and coughs, it know that it is in the best hands possible.”

Your postal worker

“I must tell you, receiving messages from you has been the great honor of my life. You’re not just delivering the mail. You’re delivering a promise. A promise, made by human beings long ago, that we would all stay connected. I’m so blessed that you’ve been provided to me and this neighborhood as our communications ambassador.”

Your cab driver

“Before we arrive at my destination, I just want to say something. Thank you. Thank you for giving me what has been the privilege of a lifetime. The opportunity you’ve given me, to get from point A to point B, is one I will never forget.”

Your barber/hairdresser

“Serving in this chair with you has been the absolute joy of my entire life. The day when I will no longer have need of your service will leave me, like the mysterious liquid home of your combs, truly blue. My hair is not always easy to negotiate with, but your way with follicle diplomacy is second to none. You have my deepest respect and admiration.”

Your butcher

“There has been no greater joy on the face of this earth than witnessing your mastery over the meaty mammal form. Your slicing and dicing of proteins has been truly a marvel to behold. One day, when humans, for one reason or another must resort to eat the flesh of other humans, it would be the honor of my life if you would cut me up properly before I am rationed out to the masses. Thank you.”

Your parents

“Being your child was the first and greatest honor of my life. My hat goes off to you for taking that courageous stand and procreating in the face of such incredible odds. It is a privilege to be the steward of such amazing genes. Thank you.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

On February 5, bride-to-be Hannah Darr received the devastating news that her fiancé Layne Meriwether had died in a car accident just four months before their wedding day. 

“I didn’t just lose Layne,” Hannah, of Fairview, Oklahoma, told HuffPost. “I lost my very best friend and my soulmate. I’ve been devastated that I don’t get to marry him, have our big wedding we both planned and spend forever with him, starting a family together and growing old together.”

Not long after the tragedy, Hannah reached out to their wedding photographer Holly Gannett about doing a photo shoot in her wedding dress to honor Layne ― her high school sweetheart and boyfriend of seven years ― and the love they shared. 

“Even though I will never get a wedding with him, I wanted to at least have a picture of him with me in my dress to honor and remember him as my future husband,” Hannah told HuffPost. “The shoot also gave me some closure and helped me accept the fact that I won’t get a wedding with him, but I am thankful I at least have pictures with him. The pictures are something I will cherish forever.”

So on May 31, Hannah put on her Allure Couture gown and posed for some beautiful, but heartbreaking photos on her family’s land ― the same place where Layne had proposed in April 2016 and where the couple had later taken their engagement photos. Holly was even able to photoshop Layne into some of the images, creating a powerful tribute to the wedding the couple never had.

On June 7, Hannah shared the photos and the story behind them on the Love What Matters Facebook page, where the post received more than 17,000 likes and hundreds of comments.  

When Hannah first saw the photos from the shoot, she told HuffPost that they “took her breath away.”

“I couldn’t stop crying because they were so perfect and precious to me,” she said. “They perfectly captured our love, but also my story of pain and sadness, but also joy and peace. The pictures are better than I could have ever dreamed.”

In the Love What Matters post, Hannah opened up about a dream she had after Layne’s death that brought her some closure:  

I had a dream I was wandering around in my wedding dress completely lost and helpless with tears spilling down my face, blurring my vision. My vision cleared a bit and I saw my sweet Layne walking towards me with his radiant smile. He wrapped his arms around me and said, ‘Baby girl, quit crying! You look beautiful. You are so strong. I know you can do this!!’ Earlier that night I had cried myself to sleep because all I wanted was a chance to marry my best friend and then I had that dream and it gave me such peace. When I saw this picture Holly Gannett captured, I instantly thought of that dream and tears streamed down my face.

In April, when Hannah was finally ready to try on the dress again, it fit her perfectly. She knew Layne would have loved it too. 

“In high school when we would go to proms or even after high school when I would wear a fancy dress, he would always make a big deal about how stunning or beautiful I looked,” Hannah told HuffPost. “He was sweet like that and always made me feel beautiful and loved. I know with my wedding dress it would’ve been like that, but times 10. It breaks my heart that he never got to see it.”

In the months since Layne’s death, Hannah has been working through her grief thanks to support from family and friends, sessions with a counselor and a grief-focused bible study. She even started a blog called Love For Layne where she writes about their relationship and chronicles her healing journey. 

“Everyone always says how amazed they are with my strength and grace, but it has not been easy,” Hannah said. “When Layne passed, my whole world stopped. My whole future was planned and it all revolved around Layne and our lives together. At first, I felt stuck, lonely, and struggled to find my purpose without Layne and my ‘new normal.’ However, my personal relationship with God has grown so much stronger and has been the biggest factor in my healing and strength. I have enjoyed blogging and sharing my story.  It has become very therapeutic for me and has also reached and touched so many people.” 

H/T Love What Matters 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

“Completely heartless” is the only way to describe the crime that George Elwood Tschaggeny allegedly committed last month, Sgt. Pete Simpson, a spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau, told The Oregonian.

As the heroes of a deadly May 26 attack on a Portland train lay bleeding from knife wounds, police say 51-year-old Tschaggeny stole a backpack and wedding ring from one of the dying men — the ring directly off his finger. The items belonged to 53-year-old Ricky Best, a retired Army veteran and married father of four who had tried to stop a known white supremacist from abusing two young women.

Many were quick to peg Tschaggeny a monster. But the reality is the alleged thief was once celebrated for his bravery, too.

In 2010, Portland police awarded Tschaggeny the Civilian Medal of Heroism after he and another man apprehended an armed bank robbery suspect in March of that year. The award citation, which the Portland Police Bureau shared with HuffPost, described the two men’s actions as “courageous and selfless.”

That was years before Tschaggeny’s life was upended by addiction, as The Oregonian and KOIN 6 News reported this week. Before he, like too many other Americans, became part of the deadly opioid epidemic now sweeping communities across the nation. Before he became homeless and decided to steal from a dying man.

“Not in my wildest dreams would I ever imagine he’d be facing what he’s facing,” Tschaggeny’s former wife told The Oregonian. “This is just not him.”

“Addiction is a situation of desperation,” his sister Camille told KOIN 6, adding that desperate people often do desperate things. 

Tschaggeny, like Best, is a military veteran and was once happily married, according to The Oregonian. He worked in property management, dreamed of opening a restaurant and, in his spare time, enjoyed hiking and biking.

But he dealt with chronic knee pain stemming from childhood injuries, which was eventually treated with prescription painkillers. And as some opioid prescriptions do, Tschaggeny’s led to addiction. Eventually, he turned to heroin.

If you think for one minute this can’t happen with someone in your family, you are grossly mistaken.
Camille, Tschaggeny’s sister

The life of the man whom his sister told KOIN 6 you would “want in your community” — the guy who in 1998 stopped along a highway to help an injured motorcyclist — quickly unraveled. Tschaggeny ended up in and out of rehab. In 2015, his wife filed for divorce and later a restraining order. Then came homelessness and run-ins with the law, including an arrest for attempted burglary last year.

“He always said, ‘It calls you, it calls you, it calls you,’” his former wife told The Oregonian, referring to his addiction. “And every time something let him down or he let someone down, it led him back into this deep hole.”

As sad as it is, Tschaggeny’s story is far from unique. 

Since 1999, opioid prescriptions and sales have quadrupled in the United States, a surge that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “helped create and fuel” an epidemic of misuse and overdosing. In 2012 alone, U.S. doctors handed out 259 million opioid prescriptions — one for every adult in the nation. When they can no longer obtain prescription painkillers, those who have become addicted may turn to cheaper heroin. Some resort to crime to pay for their habit. Others end up a statistic, among the approximately 90 Americans that die every day from an opioid overdose, according to 2015 CDC statistics. 

Few states have been harder hit by the crisis than Oregon. In 2015, nearly 1 in 4 Oregonians received a opioid prescription, and the state consistently ranks in the top five for non-medical use of prescription opioids, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Tackling the epidemic was the subject of a hearing Wednesday before the Oregon House Committee on Health Care. 

These days, roughly 75 percent of new heroin users start out using prescription drugs, according to Dwight Holton, a former U.S. attorney for Oregon and the current CEO of Lines for Life, a nonprofit working to prevent substance abuse and suicide. After so many years of dealing with tragedy after tragedy, Holton said he’s “frankly sick and tired of meeting mothers who have lost children to opioid overdose that started with prescription drugs.”

Tschaggeny’s story “crystalizes how quickly you can go from the guy next door to someone so desperate that they would do something that most of us consider completely unthinkable and heartless,” Holton said.

Surveillance video released June 1 by Portland police shows the suspected thief, later identified as Tschaggeny, walking off a MAX Light Rail train. He’s wearing black shorts, a black Marilyn Monroe T-shirt and a black baseball cap. In his hands are two backpacks, one of which police say belonged to Best and contained a number of “personal items important to the Best family.”

The following day, a tip from a Domino’s Pizza employee led police to a homeless camp along Interstate 84. There they found Tschaggeny, allegedly wearing Best’s wedding band and in possession of his backpack. He was arrested without incident. 

On Tuesday, Tschaggeny pleaded not guilty to felony charges of identity theft, theft and abuse of a corpse, The Oregonian reports. He’s due back in court July 24.

Tschaggeny’s sister suggested that her brother might have initially been trying to help Best. However, “when he saw that there was nothing he could [do] to effect a positive outcome, the voice of the addiction grabbed him and said, ‘Dude, we’re in a desperate situation. This is time for a desperate act,’” she told KOIN 6.

She added that she is “horribly, horribly sorry” for the additional pain her brother caused the Best family and said, “I’m not begging for the family’s forgiveness. I think it’s an ask too great.”

But she hopes people realize that her brother is battling a crippling addiction.

“If you think for one minute this can’t happen with someone in your family,” she said, “you are grossly mistaken.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

It’s Father’s Day again, and we’re always down to celebrate just how awesome dads are.

So here are 29 ridiculously sweet photos professional birth photographers have captured of dads supporting their partners in the delivery room — and locking eyes with their babies for the very first time.

(BRB, going to grab some tissues.)

Captions have been edited and condensed. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Asgardia, also known as “The Space Nation,” will launch a small satellite later this year. According to Asgardia’s leader, Russian scientist Igor Ashurbeyli, the satellite will carry the nation’s constitution, its flag and data stored by up to 1.5 mi…