Open mike 05/12/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 5th, 2024 - 30 comments
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Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

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30 comments on “Open mike 05/12/2024 ”

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  1. Binders full of women 1
    5 December 2024 at 7:05 am

    FFS Biden! Could have just let boy boy do 6 months in Club-Fed. And what did Hunty-Bunty do 10.5 years ago that necessitated a pardon going back 11!! years. As John Stewart says– that's an odd number to round off on. Dems have lost any iota of moral high ground they may have had and now Trump is free to pardon all the Jan 6ers. I can't see Dems regaining the White House— the Waitakere Men have gone for good.

    • Barfly 1.1
      5 December 2024 at 8:39 am

      I disagree

      • bwaghorn 1.1.1
        5 December 2024 at 9:13 am

        To which bit?

        The pardon bit stinks to high heaven

        • satty 1.1.1.1
          5 December 2024 at 9:30 am

          I agree, the "pardon stinks".

          I guess Biden figured that Trump is going to pardon the capitol rioters anyway… it's a slippery slope.

          • aj 1.1.1.1.1
            5 December 2024 at 10:14 am

            A system whereby a person in political power can pardon a family member who has pleaded guilty is already a long way down a slippery slope.

        • Barfly 1.1.1.2
          5 December 2024 at 10:02 am

          IMHO

          The Hunter Biden prosecutions had large political connections or he would have already been sentenced and done the 6 months in 'club fed' and that would have standard operating procedure nothing – out of the ordinary. The fact is he is Joe Biden's son and Trump has already previously targetted him

          n December 2020, Hunter Biden disclosed his tax affairs were under Justice Department (DOJ) criminal investigation. Begun in late 2018, the investigation initially examined possible money laundering, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigators were unable to find sufficient evidence to justify a prosecution.

          On December 8, 2020, prosecutors in Delaware served two subpoenas, at least one regarding Biden's taxes.[14] Trump administration attorney general William Barr said in December 2020 that he did not see the need for a special counsel, distancing himself from statements of then-president Donald Trump, who had pressed him to use the DOJ to attack the Biden family during his 2020 presidential campaign.[15] (My bold)

          I have absolutely no doubt that Trump would have continued a campaign targetting Hunter Biden simply because he is Joe Biden's son and Trump would have used every government organisation to do this simply because he is able to.

          I agree pardoning HB isn't justice but not pardoning him would have led to a greater injustice. Again this is IMHO

        • Barfly 1.1.1.3
          5 December 2024 at 10:03 am

          IMHO

          The Hunter Biden prosecutions had large political connections or he would have already been sentenced and done the 6 months in 'club fed' and that would have standard operating procedure nothing – out of the ordinary. The fact is he is Joe Biden's son and Trump has already previously targetted him

          On December 8, 2020, prosecutors in Delaware served two subpoenas, at least one regarding Biden's taxes.[14] Trump administration attorney general William Barr said in December 2020 that he did not see the need for a special counsel, distancing himself from statements of then-president Donald Trump, who had pressed him to use the DOJ to attack the Biden family during his 2020 presidential campaign.[15] (My bold)

          I have absolutely no doubt that Trump would have continued a campaign targetting Hunter Biden simply because he is Joe Biden's son and Trump would have used every government organisation to do this simply because he is able to.

          I agree pardoning HB isn't justice but not pardoning him would have led to a greater injustice. Again this is IMHO

    • tWig 1.2
      5 December 2024 at 10:41 am

      I also wondered whether Biden was worried that his son's sentencing would be re-opened under Trump.

    • observer 1.3
      5 December 2024 at 1:30 pm

      Anybody who seriously believes Trump was going to stop and say "ooh, I'd better not do a bunch of bad stuff because Biden didn't pardon his son, so I must do the right thing too" …

      … has been asleep for 8 years.

      Of course Biden was wrong to do it. But (also of course) it makes no difference whatsoever to Trump. He will pardon the Jan 6 criminals because he can. And if Biden was a saint who cured cancer, Trump would still do whatever the f*ck he wants.

      This liberal self-delusion, that lawless dictators can be encouraged to behave nicely if only the nice ethical liberals would show them how … it's incredible that anyone still clings to it.

      Was 8 years not enough to learn the blindingly obvious? Have 4 more.

  2. Sanctuary 2
    5 December 2024 at 9:22 am

    Ayesha Verrall absolutely owned Lester Levy yesterday, made Uffindell looks ineffectual, set the media narrative and all round dominated the battlespace at yesterday's select committee hearing where her adroit use of parliamentary privilege will surely have royally pissed of Levy and his lackeys. Anyway, he is a dead man walking if the polls keep turning against this government and the hapless Luxon remains in charge.

    • Tiger Mountain 2.1
      5 December 2024 at 10:00 am

      yes

    • AB 2.2
      5 December 2024 at 10:07 am

      They wanted to make the redundancies anyway simply to shrink the size of the state out of a pure ideological fixation. So they sneakily pulled the cost of those redundancies forward one year in order to worsen the deficit, then pointed at that deficit to justify the redundancies themselves.

      Moreover, committing the money forward showed that they intended to make the redundancies no matter what emerged from any good faith consultation process around those redundancies, i.e. they signalled their intention to run a bogus consultation process.

      The depth of the unprincipled cynicism in all this is just epic. No wonder Verrall was ropeable. Though it means that she now has a big target on her back. The dirt-digging machine will be at work.

      • Anne 2.2.1
        5 December 2024 at 10:43 am

        Ayesha said: "he has a reputation for cooking the books"

        She's not going to apologise. Just as Willy Jackson didn't.

        • Sanctuary 2.2.1.1
          5 December 2024 at 11:23 am

          Levy and his dodgy offsiders tried a blatant political manoeuvre in order to dump costs onto the previous Labour government only to discover they'd taken the political equivalent of a dull butter knife to a select committee gunfight.

  3. Tony Veitch 3
    5 December 2024 at 9:55 am

    and the hapless Luxon remains in charge.

    And long may that continue!

  4. Adrian 4
    5 December 2024 at 10:29 am

    5Dumping nurses and other health workers on the dole line is the first move in privatisation for Levy and his co- conspirators, ( he is connected to private providers as outlined on this site a few weeks ago ) as it depresses wage claims for the nurses etc needing a job. This is a cynical plan to pass a huge part of NZ health over to US interests. Ayesha knows a lot more about this than she is letting on. She may well turn out to be the saviour of our free health service.

    • Drowsy M. Kram 4.1
      5 December 2024 at 12:20 pm

      She [Verrall] may well turn out to be the saviour of our free health service.

      yes Kiwis who aren't 'sorted' can only hope – and vote.

  5. joe90 5
    5 December 2024 at 10:44 am

    When you're in an industry where the list of suspects is your customer base.

    /

    New York City police have launched a manhunt for a masked suspect who gunned down the head of a US medical insurance giant, in what investigators described as a "brazen, targeted attack".

    UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson was fatally shot in the back on Wednesday morning outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where he had been scheduled to speak at an investor conference later in the day.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnv3dnm64vlo

    Another Example of Insurers Putting Profits Over Patients

    CHICAGO – In an unprecedented move, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield plans representing Connecticut, New York and Missouri have unilaterally declared it will no longer pay for anesthesia care if the surgery or procedure goes beyond an arbitrary time limit, regardless of how long the surgical procedure takes. The American Society of Anesthesiologists calls on Anthem to reverse this proposal immediately.

    https://www.asahq.org/about-asa/newsroom/news-releases/2024/11/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-will-not-pay-complete-duration-of-anesthesia-for-surgical-procedures

    • Sanctuary 5.1
      5 December 2024 at 11:17 am

      NYPD reportedly has a suspect list of 335 million names.

      • joe90 5.1.2
        5 December 2024 at 6:57 pm

        People must be lining up to do the work of the courts and the guillotine.

        The healthcare CEO shot and killed in New York on Wednesday was under investigation by the Department of Justice into allegations of insider trading at the time of his death.

        UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was one of several senior executives at the health insurance company who sold stock ahead of an antitrust investigation launched by the DOJ, according to a Crain's New York Business report from April.

        Thompson, 50, was killed in what police are calling a “targeted shooting”

        In February, Thompson sold shares of the company's stock options worth $15.1 million just two weeks before the DOJ launched a federal antitrust investigation into the company.

        https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-sold-stocks-b2659093.html

        In May 2021, a nurse at UnitedHealthcare called a colleague to share some welcome news about a problem the two had been grappling with for weeks.

        United provided the health insurance plan for students at Penn State University. It was a large and potentially lucrative account: lots of young, healthy students paying premiums in, not too many huge medical reimbursements going out.

        But one student was costing United a lot of money. Christopher McNaughton suffered from a crippling case of ulcerative colitis — an ailment that caused him to develop severe arthritis, debilitating diarrhea, numbing fatigue and life-threatening blood clots. His medical bills were running nearly $2 million a year.

        United had flagged McNaughton’s case as a “high dollar account,” and the company was reviewing whether it needed to keep paying for the expensive cocktail of drugs crafted by a Mayo Clinic specialist that had brought McNaughton’s disease under control after he’d been through years of misery.

        On the 2021 phone call, which was recorded by the company, nurse Victoria Kavanaugh told her colleague that a doctor contracted by United to review the case had concluded that McNaughton’s treatment was “not medically necessary.” Her colleague, Dave Opperman, reacted to the news with a long laugh.

        “I knew that was coming,” said Opperman, who heads up a United subsidiary that brokered the health insurance contract between United and Penn State. “I did too,” Kavanaugh replied.

        https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis

  6. tWig 6
    5 December 2024 at 11:11 am

    Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke is one of the BBC 100 Women 2024.

    'This year she received the prestigious One Young World Politician of the Year award for her efforts to amplify young indigenous voices in politics. She recently led another haka that brought parliament to a halt to protest against a controversial bill.

    "Women have to kick down the doors to places they know they are not invited to, whether that is on a local, national or global level within politics." '

    Like Ardern, a prophet who has less honour in their own county.

  7. adam 7
    5 December 2024 at 1:22 pm

    Yanks had enough of greed? Murder of CEO United Health, in broad daylight

  8. joe90 8
    5 December 2024 at 1:48 pm

    The lady wasn't having it.

    (video)

    南洋辉叔 Uncle Hui

    @alexcmhwee

    Ms. Ahn Kwok-sak, 35, was a TV host and later a spokesperson for the Democratic Party of South Korea.

    Ahn snatched gun from special forces during the defense struggle at the National Assembly last night. She loudly rebuked the soldiers for pointing guns at citizens.

    Snatching gun is a very dangerous act. She must know the seriousness of the matter, but she has risked her life to defend democracy.

    The brave Ms. Ahn was the brightest star last night.

    https://xcancel.com/alexcmhwee/status/1864165067245408721

  9. joe90 9
    5 December 2024 at 2:47 pm

    Buyers remorse in …3..2 …

    A growing chorus is calling for cuts to Veteran Affairs disability benefits as a way to save federal dollars — a move that ignores the very real costs of two decades of war, and could cause irreparable harm to generations of veterans, experts warn.

    The most recent call for cuts is a widely criticized opinion article in The Economist on Nov. 28 that described veterans’ disability benefits as “absurdly generous.” Experts told Task & Purpose that the essay is representative of widespread public misperceptions that threaten to reduce veterans’ compensation for service-connected health conditions.

    The Economist piece echoes an argument made by the Washington Post’s editorial board last year that limiting disability payments to veterans would help get America’s financial house in order.

    These arguments may now have a real chance of becoming law.

    Policies laid out in Project 2025, touted as a blueprint for a second Donald Trump term, would revamp the Department of Veterans of Affairs with proposals to increase privatization, narrow the eligibility criteria for health benefits and replace civil service-style employees with political appointees in its ranks. Produced by the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., the policy guide states that a growing number of health conditions that qualify for VA disability are “tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service.”

    https://taskandpurpose.com/news/veterans-disability-benefits-cuts/

  10. Adrian 10
    5 December 2024 at 5:20 pm

    This is a brilliant idea, what could possibly go wrong with pissing off highly trained snipers and the like ? Could be a win all round.