www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/books/review/best-historical-fiction-books-2024.html
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I started Democracy Docket to be fearlessly independent and unapologetically pro-democracy. It will always stand tall. It will not obey.
— Read on www.democracydocket.com/opinion/now-is-the-time-for-courage/agree. Agree. Agree.
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apple.news/AJUIfQ_ZmRmmQCx8DrP2hWQ
Inside the zone, called the Netzarim corridor after a former Israeli settlement, there are two military bases made up of trailer-sized mobile bomb shelters with water, electrical poles, cellular towers and a synagogue. The road is now paved, and soldiers zip along in open-top vehicles through an area the size of Tel Aviv.
The Netzarim corridor is one of the growing signs that the Israeli military is planning for an indefinite stay in Gaza. Israel has created several other military roads in Gaza, and blocked out a roughly half-mile buffer zone snaking around the territory.
Taken together, they paint a picture of tight Israeli control that some Israelis and Palestinians worry presages a long-term Israeli occupation or even a rebuilding of Jewish settlements in Gaza—something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said won’t happen.
Nearly everything around the Netzarim corridor is destroyed—Palestinian neighborhoods, villages and farmland. Israel uses the corridor to maintain tight control over Gaza’s flow of people, goods and weapons
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apple.news/AIr8uuC70QgSPzD4xzcyXig
Under Thompson, UnitedHealthcare ramped up its use of tactics such as “prior authorization,” in which physicians must submit additional paperwork to justify their treatments and prescriptions, according to reports by congressional investigators and federal watchdogs. The company also increasingly relied on automated programs to immediately reject claims, lawmakers and watchdogs have said.
Industry analysts have said that denying claims has helped UnitedHealthcare and other insurers cut costs and boost profits. The tactics have been faulted by lawmakers, federal officials and advocacy groups who say the health insurance giant has wrongly denied care to customers.
UnitedHealthcare has defended its practices, saying that lawmakers’ scrutiny is misplaced and that it is working to prioritize patient care.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General investigated UnitedHealthcare and other health insurers that operated managed-care organizations, or MCOs. The probe focused on insurers’ Medicaid denials in 2019 — during part of which, Thompson ran UnitedHealthcare’s Medicaid business — and concluded that the program had high rates of prior authorization denials.
Stop using prior authorization to kill people,” Jennifer Coffey, a woman from Manchester, New Hampshire, said to Witty.
In a subsequent interview, Coffey and fellow protesters shared their stories of having their care requests rejected by UnitedHealthcare.
“Regulators shouldn’t have to be looking over insurers’ shoulders every time a senior citizen falls or suffers a stroke,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said in a video accompanying a Senate report released in October that faulted UnitedHealthcare and other insurers for repeatedly turning down Medicare Advantage patients’ requests. Blumenthal oversaw the investigation.
When asked for comment, a spokesman for UnitedHealthcare pointed to a company statement. “While our hearts are broken, we have been touched by the huge outpouring of kindness and support in the hours since this horrific crime took place,” the statement said. “Our priorities are, first and foremost, supporting Brian’s family; ensuring the safety of our employees; and working with law enforcement to bring the perpetrator to justice.”
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This week illuminates the festering sickness of corporate greed that has corrupted our health care, political, & media institutions that exist to profit the powerful at the expense of the majority.
— Read on thelefthook.substack.com/p/americas-pre-existing-condition-corporate -
It wasn’t just that Trump got more votes. It wasn’t just that Harris had lower turnout. A deep dive into the psychological, existential, and systemic reasons Harris and Democrats didn’t win in 2024.
— Read on eladnehorai.substack.com/p/the-deeper-reasons-democrats-lost -
In April, the New York Times published a nearly 8,000-word story about what James Comey was thinking last year while overseeing FBI investigations into…
Their relationships were laden with competition, as all were vying for commissions by powerful Florentine and Roman patrons. Michelangelo and Leonardo competed for the attention of the powerful Medici family, and after Raphael emerged on the scene he and Michelangelo fought for commissions from Pope Julius II. Michelangelo belittled the achievements of his younger rival after his early death, claiming, “everything he learned he learned from me.”
In “Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael,” the Royal Academy is showcasing some of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance drawing in the world. The exhibition has been organized in partnership with London’s National Gallery and the Royal Collection Trust, whose current exhibition “Drawing the Italian Renaissance” also features work by the three masters.
— Read on slate.com/culture/2017/07/em-the-chickenshit-club-em.html -
Total auction sales of the Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s work have more than doubled between 2020 and and 2023.
— Read on news.artnet.com/art-world/renaissance-rivals-michelangelo-leonardo-raphael-london-2569418Their relationships were laden with competition, as all were vying for commissions by powerful Florentine and Roman patrons. Michelangelo and Leonardo competed for the attention of the powerful Medici family, and after Raphael emerged on the scene he and Michelangelo fought for commissions from Pope Julius II. Michelangelo belittled the achievements of his younger rival after his early death, claiming, “everything he learned he learned from me.”
In “Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael,” the Royal Academy is showcasing some of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance drawing in the world. The exhibition has been organized in partnership with London’s National Gallery and the Royal Collection Trust, whose current exhibition “Drawing the Italian Renaissance” also features work by the three masters.
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THURSDAY 29 NOVEMER 2024
I just got up and I think I remember this from last year. Four, or maybe five, hours of heavy eating and talking in our dear aunt M’s dining room chairs and I’m crippled. If last year is any indication, I’ll be cripped for days. This year, even my hands hurt. Jesus. We are all starting to look old and worn around the Thanksgiving table. Aunt’M is the oldest by ten years and she looks better and has more energy than the rest of us.
Then there was the younger crew, outside, sitting in a circle smoking God knows what. That is what Thanksgiving has become.
On to my MSNBC family, I have a morbid curiosity about watching the demise of Morning Joe. This morning, they are trying to gain viewers with celebrity interviews. And, talk about looking old, Al Pacino is a wreck. The very fact that MSNBC gave Scarborough four hours every weekday morning and then a show at the weekend demonstrates the true train wreck that legacy media is. If you are at all interesting in this, tune in and have a listen to Keith Olbermann. Olbermann is one of the few people who hates Joe Scarborough and the dreadful Mika more than I do. And, Olbermann remembers (as I do) that Joe and the dreadful Mika were so far up Trump’s ass in 2015, 2016, they couldn’t even see. I think the only reason the abandoned him was because he outed their adulterous affair. I also believe that should the program get cancelled, Joe Scarborough will divorce the dreadful (know your worth) Mike within five minutes.
Nobody, nobody but me notes the irony of the dreadful Mika pimping a scam operation called “Know your Worth,” for women when she slept her way to a permanent position on Morning Joe and now has kissed Donald Trump’s ass. That’s really knowing your worth.
The widespread argument that Joe and the dreadful Mika had to take their sorry asses to Mara-Lago and kiss Donald Trump’s ass because they were “afraid.” Right. Would either of them like to talk to one person, one single person living in Ukraine, putting up with being bombed every night. Afraid? Trash them. They are trash. They are afraid they won’t be making millions, afraid that they won’t be able to rant for hours every morning about how they have been right for thirty years. Afraid. They disgust me.
And, on the subject of disgusting people, in his typical gift to America on Thanksgiving Day, Putin is threatening to bomb Ukrainian “decision making centers.” On 12 November, Newsweek reported that Nikolai Patrushev, part of Putin’s inner circle (and supposedly the person who coordinated bombings in Moscow that helped get Putin in office), told a Russian newspaper: “To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations…he will be obliged to fulfill them.” [1]
They are not even pretending anymore that Trump is anything but a Russian puppet, and still, NOBODY DOES ANYTHING. Merrick Garland is sending out leaks that he intends to release a report by Smith. I will believe it when I see it. Merrick Garland is complicit in the situation we now find ourselves in. Complicit up to his eyeballs. He is like Brian Kemp and Liz Cheney, and Raspensberger. They have worked and turned their backs and ignored and allowed the country to go down the drain and now they want some kind of respect. Not from me. Not for Cheney, not for Brian Kemp, not for Merrick Garland.
Book: Jacob Soboroff (2024) Separated. Also a film.
- UN has deemed as “torture” family separation.
- This was done to scare people from coming to this country. These were people who were, by and large, leaving the country they lived in because of fear.
- Tom Homan intellectual father of the policy and was pushing for it during the Obama administration.
- Many agencies had a hand in this policy.
- Mass deportation is family separation by another name.
- Lee Gelernt, ACLU Attorney: When people see what this means, they tend to say, no, that’s not what we wanted. As others have said, they can force the decision for parents to leave or take their citizen children to another country. The country is going to have to “push back.” “There is more anti-immigrant sentiment” now than in 2016. These are human stories. Children who have experienced this spend years worrying about whether they will be taken away again.
- Jacob Soboroff: Security contractors were supervising some of these kids. People all around the world were against this. The Pope spoke out about this.
- Human Rights Watch: Family Separation https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/11/us-family-separation-harming-children-families
- MSNBC: According to DHS 1,360 children remain without confirmed reunion.
- “state created orphans.” “as a tool of immigration policy.” Quotes from Separated.
- Gelernt: The Trump administration didn’t keep track of who these children and babies belonged to. We said after WWII we would not send people back into danger without properly screening them. “You know you have to keep fighting.”
Notes:
- I do not feel sorry for RFK in any way, for any reason.
- I read that Steve (just out of prison) Bannon was no longer in the Trump inner circle. But evidently this is not true. He is long time friends with Boris Epshteyn and Epshteyn is recommending cabinet members who have appeared on Bannon’s “War Room.”
[1] “Patrushev is considered one of the key drivers of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine…” (Newsweek, 11/12/24).
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Boris Epshteyn, Susie Wiles and JD Vance hold outsized influence in the president-elect’s administration selections
— Read on www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/29/trump-administration-influence-cabinet -
Letter: With regard to gun trafficking, if we want Mexico to be a better neighbor, we need to be a better neighbor to Mexico.
— Read on www.sltrib.com/opinion/letters/2024/11/24/letter-with-regard-gun-trafficking/
