Octopus Overlords

Andrew Giuliani, the son of the embattled Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, has announced he will run for New York governor in 2022.

The 35-year-old, who served as a special assistant in Trump’s White House and is a former contributor to the hard rightwing Newsmax television channel, made the announcement on Tuesday, declaring: “I’m a politician out of the womb.”
...
The election would represent a clash of New York political dynasties – Giuliani’s father, Rudy Giuliani, served as New York City’s mayor from 1994 to 2001, and Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was governor of New York from 1983 to 1994.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 5:17 pm New York, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Andrew Giuliani, the son of the embattled Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, has announced he will run for New York governor in 2022.

The 35-year-old, who served as a special assistant in Trump’s White House and is a former contributor to the hard rightwing Newsmax television channel, made the announcement on Tuesday, declaring: “I’m a politician out of the womb.”
...
The election would represent a clash of New York political dynasties – Giuliani’s father, Rudy Giuliani, served as New York City’s mayor from 1994 to 2001, and Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was governor of New York from 1983 to 1994.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote: ↑Sat May 15, 2021 1:16 pm
Anyone want to take a wild guess as to which neighborhood in my area has the crazily expensive houses in relatively new developments?

Belarusian authorities ordered a Ryanair flight that took off in Athens to land in their capital of Minsk over a bomb threat, which the opposition is calling just a pretext to arrest an activist on board.

The news service for the Minsk airport said a bomb threat had been reported on the plane and state media added that President Alexander Lukashenko had ordered the plane to land with a fighter escort.

Roman Protasevich, who ran the popular opposition social media Telegram channel NEXTA from outside of Belarus, was detained upon the plane’s surprise landing. The flight was headed to Vilnius in Lithuania.

He faces the death penalty after he and the creator of NEXTA, which exposed Belarus police brutality during anti-government protests last year, were added to a list of individuals involved in terrorist activities in November.

In tense Belarus, strongman Lukashenko turns back toward Moscow for help

Protasevich said on his Telegram channel earlier Sunday that he sensed he was under surveillance before departing Lithuania.

“The regime forced the landing [of the] Ryanair plane in Minsk to arrest journalist and activist Roman Protasevich,” opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said on Twitter, adding she is demanding his “immediate release” and calling on the International Civil Aviation Organization to take action.

Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has unleashed a sustained crackdown against all forms of opposition, including media. On Tuesday, the offices of Belarusian independent news site Tut.by were raided after officials said a criminal case of “large-scale tax evasion” had been opened against the outlet.

Lukashenko claimed sweeping victory in last year’s elections — a result internationally denounced as false. Months of sustained popular protests against his rule followed, prompting a heavy crackdown that saw most of the opposition exiled or jailed.

A Florida high school is facing backlash for altering the yearbook photos of 80 female students to add clothing to their chests and shoulders.

The school district told local media the changes were made to ensure the photos met the dress code, which says girls' shirts must be "modest".

But critics pointed to yearbook photos of male students left unedited despite violating the same standards.

The digital alterations were made without permission, the students say.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 8:55 amCNBC is good to watch to get where the dialog is.

Two members of a panel of outside advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have resigned in protest at the agency's decision to approve Biogen Inc's Aduhelm for treatment of Alzheimer's disease despite the committee’s recommendation against doing so.

Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr. David Knopman, a panel member who had been recused from the advisors’ November meeting to review the drug because he was an investigator in clinical trials of Biogen’s drug, said he resigned on Wednesday.

"I was very disappointed at how the advisory committee input was treated by the FDA," Dr. Knopman told Reuters. "I don't wish to be put in a position like this again.”

The 11-member committee voted nearly unanimously in November that Biogen's drug should not be approved, citing inconclusive evidence that the drug was effective. Due to his recusal, Knopman did not participate in the vote.

The FDA on Monday gave the drug "accelerated approval,” based on evidence that it can reduce a likely contributor to Alzheimer’s, rather than proof of a clear benefit against the disease.

On Tuesday, a member of the advisory group who voted against the approval, Washington University neurologist Dr. Joel Perlmutter, resigned from the committee, citing the FDA's approval of Aduhelm without further discussion with its advisors.

Doctors and hospitals are condemning plans by UnitedHealthcare—the country’s largest health insurance company—to retroactively deny emergency medical care coverage to members if UHC decides the reason for the emergency medical care wasn’t actually an emergency.

In the future, if one of UHC's 70 million members submits a claim for an emergency department visit, UHC will carefully review what health problems led to the visit, the “intensity of diagnostic services performed” at the emergency department (ED), and some context for the visit, like the member’s underlying health conditions and outside circumstances. If UHC decides the medical situation didn’t constitute an emergency, it will provide “no coverage or limited coverage,” depending on the member’s specific insurance plan.

Emergency medical doctors and hospitals were quick to rebuke the plan. They say it sets a dangerous precedent of requiring patients to assess their own medical problems before seeking emergency care, which could end up delaying or preventing critical and even lifesaving treatment.

The policy was initially set to take effect July 1. But in an email to Ars Thursday, UHC now says it is delaying the rollout amid the criticism—at least until the end of the pandemic.

“Based on feedback from our provider partners and discussions with medical societies, we have decided to delay the implementation of our emergency department policy until at least the end of the national public health emergency period,” a UHC representative told Ars in an email. “We will use this time to continue to educate consumers, customers, and providers on the new policy and help ensure that people visit an appropriate site of service for non-emergency care needs.”

Zarathud wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 4:17 pm UHC is the worst insurance. My wife has done many battles with them — even when the firm self-insured and used them as an administrator.

ImLawBoy wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:44 am

Zarathud wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 4:17 pm UHC is the worst insurance. My wife has done many battles with them — even when the firm self-insured and used them as an administrator.

My anecdotal evidence says BCBS is just as bad as UHC. I used to have UHC, but currently have BCBS (both times the administrator, as my employer self-insures). I've had to fight both of them on stupid things, particularly when their medical experts say that my son doesn't have a medical need for something that his actual doctors say he needs.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:30 pm

ImLawBoy wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:44 am

Zarathud wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 4:17 pm UHC is the worst insurance. My wife has done many battles with them — even when the firm self-insured and used them as an administrator.

My anecdotal evidence says BCBS is just as bad as UHC. I used to have UHC, but currently have BCBS (both times the administrator, as my employer self-insures). I've had to fight both of them on stupid things, particularly when their medical experts say that my son doesn't have a medical need for something that his actual doctors say he needs.

Naturally, I love BCBS (minus one incident for which I got screwed pretty bad because they pre-advised me poorly about my medical coverage for dental medicine and out of network coverage to treat a non dental problem) whereas Aetna has been horrible for the few years I've had them. Even though I'm on a PPO, everything is a fight to get covered and they their in network is smaller than BCBS. Fortunately when my company switched from BCBS to Aetna they also signed on with a company called Health Care Advocate and all but two denials I have from Aetna I have called into Health Care Advocate and they took the burden off me and had those denials reversed. Those were each 20 minute phone calls instead of weeks and countless hours of banging my head against the wall.

hitbyambulance wrote: ↑Mon Jun 21, 2021 4:12 pm probably should get its own thread, but i'm too lazy to make one - looks like current trends are showing that most 'western' nations will be experiencing significant depopulation in about half a century from now. i don't know how i feel exactly about pushing people to make more babies (given our current resource scarcities - isn't the earth populated enough??) but we absolutely should be aggressively courting immigrants.

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 12:43 pm How the hell Sidney Powell still has a license is beyond me. I guess NC (I assume that's where the decision would be made) doesn't really give a shit about lying lawyers.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed a bar complaint against election conspiracy theorist lawyer Sidney Powell Monday, asking the state bar in Texas and Michigan to strip her of her ability to practice law.

"She did not just tiptoe near a precarious ethical line — she outright crossed it," Whitmer wrote in the complaint. "By filing a frivolous lawsuit based on false statements and by brazenly attempting to disenfranchise Michigan voters during the recent presidential election, she engaged in grave attorney misconduct."

Whitmer was joined by two of Michigan's other top state officials, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who filed their own bar complaints. They ask that the Texas state bar, where Powell is admitted to practice, take away Powell's law license after she filed multiple failed, conspiratorial lawsuits arguing that election technology companies rigged the 2020 presidential election by secretly switching votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden — a far fetched scheme she said was linked to China, Iran, and the now-dead Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. They also filed complaints against Greg Rohl, Scott Hagerstrom, and Stefanie Junttila, all colleagues of Powell involved in the effort.

The NY Times wrote:The chaos that engulfed the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday stemmed from a large-scale human error committed by the city Board of Elections.

The board had created about 135,000 dummy ballots to test the ranked-choice-voting software being used in several of the elections on Primary Day, including in the Democratic primary for mayor. Those dummy ballots had votes for candidates on them.

On Tuesday, the board ran a preliminary ranked-choice tally that was supposed to show the state of the race pending the counting of more than 100,000 absentee ballots. But someone neglected to remove the dummy ballots from the system, so the tally included both the dummy ballots and more than 800,000 actual ballots cast by voters.