I like him being in there, I think we should stay with the small lineup.

NEW YORK (AP) — The leader of UnitedHealth Group conceded that the patchwork U.S. health system "does not work as well as it should" but said Friday that the insurance executive gunned down on a Manhattan sidewalk cared about customers and was working to make it better.

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was killed last week, was described as kind and brilliant by UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty in a guest essay published in The New York Times.

Witty said he understood people's frustration but described Thompson as part of the solution.

Thompson never forgot growing up in his family's farmhouse in Iowa and focused on improving the experiences of consumers.

"His dad spent more than 40 years unloading trucks at grain elevators. B.T., as we knew him, worked farm jobs as a kid and fished at a gravel pit with his brother. He never forgot where he came from, because it was the needs of people who live in places like Jewell, Iowa, that he considered first in finding ways to improve care," Witty wrote.

Witty said his company shares some responsibility for lack of understanding of coverage decisions.

"We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people's frustrations with it. No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It's a patchwork built over decades," Witty wrote. "Our mission is to help make it work better."

What would happen? I think one of our board billionaires should do that.

Trying to get more omega 3s in my life. Salmon and tuna salad seem like the best ways to do it. I've not settled upon a surefire method or recipe for salmon. Part of me says go sous vide because it is idiot proof, but then I'd be missing out some of the char/crispiness. Wactcha got HORT?

This kid seems to have been a bit under the radar. I’m curious how all this International Greco success translates to the collegiate season. He’s competed at multiple weights internationally. Does that mean he’s fits in at 141 or 149 next season? Kids a lot of f*n to watch. He’s a real bulldog out there and likes to scrap. Easy to root for.

All the Fran butt lickers unite.

Hindsight's obviously 20/20, but I don't think it takes an optometrist to see that Iowa was playing against some big-ass dudes tonight. Dembele was working. And if fatigue wasn't a factor — Fran didn't even wait for me to finish my postgame question to say it wasn't — then lineup construction was the fault in a game where Iowa was outscored by 10 in second-chance points and lost by 9.

FREE:

AP Top 25 Poll (December 9)


Others Receiving Votes
Alabama (73), Illinois (69), California (23), Stanford (18), Vanderbilt (15), Utah (14), Louisville (9), South Dakota State (8), Richmond (8), Creighton (5), Oklahoma State (4), Texas Tech (3), Harvard (3), Florida State (3), Baylor (1)

Dropped Out
Alabama (#19), Illinois (#21), Louisville (#22)

============================

Coaches Top 25 (12/10)


Others Receiving Votes
Georgia Tech (68), Michigan (57), Nebraska (42), Louisville (31), Mississippi State (13), Utah (12), Florida State (11), California (11), Vanderbilt (10), South Dakota State (7), Stanford (1)

Dropped Out
Louisville (#22)

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Elon and Vivek running it, WOW! Talk about a talented team.. looks like trump really is aiming to do to the federal government what elon did to twitter.

DOGE!!!

Higgins first team and KJ second team.

Time to boycott Amazon, Whole Foods, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads & the Washington Post!

The free story from the AP:

TRUMP BABY!!!!

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Well earned.

Now that big promise #1 was shown to be a lie... he tells us now that can't do anything about food costs... which is the next broken promise/lie? Deportations?? The border?? Bonespurs duped the cult... once again... So sad.

... for some, otherwise seemingly intelligent people, to vote for Trump. So, if it wasn't groceries and gas, what was it? These people know a president doesn't control grocery prices.

Remember how you all said it isn’t going to happen? I’ve taken a new philosophy in life. IDGAF about strangers anymore. If you aren’t a friend or a family member I don’t give 2 shits about you or what happens to you. Apparently most of this country is selfish is anyway. Time to start doing the same. I hope it all works out but **** it whatever. I’m an upper class middle aged white man, with a wife that can no longer have children. I’ll be fine.

It’s hilarious how everything coming to light is what people warned of. Most HBOTrs don’t need to worry since we are white male billionaires. But all you dirt poor magas….

8pm FS1

Iowa St (8-2) comes to town on a 3 games winning streak after the South Carolina beatdown.

Iowa (8-1) is reeling after a tough loss to Tennessee and having a lot of problems protecting the ball the last several games.

Carver should be rocking tonight and to me this game is all about rebounding and knocking down open shots.

I like Iowa in a nail biter, 82-79

On Wednesday, Christopher Wray told his F.B.I. colleagues that he would step down as director by the end of President Biden’s term. His statement was a perfect example of bureaucratic deference. “I’ve decided the right thing for the bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down,” Wray said. He wants to “avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”

But is something else going on?

By stepping down, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a “legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.”

Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.

Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1. Trump will have to select someone else to lead the F.B.I. immediately, or the position will default to the “first assistant to the office.”

In this case, that means the position would default to Paul Abbate, who has been the deputy director of the F.B.I. since 2021, unless Trump chooses someone else, and that “someone else” cannot be Patel, at least not right away.

The bottom line is that the Senate has to do its job. Wray is foreclosing a presidential appointment under the Vacancies Reform Act, and — as I wrote in a column last month — the Supreme Court has most likely foreclosed the use of a recess appointment to bypass the Senate.

So a resignation that at first blush looks like a capitulation (why didn’t he wait to be fired?) is actually an act of defiance. It narrows Trump’s options, and it places the Senate at center stage. In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the advice and consent power was designed to be “an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters.”

Patel is just such an “unfit character,” and now it’s senators’ responsibility to protect the American republic from his malign influence — if, that is, they have the courage to do their jobs.

Drug traffickers, crack dealers, cartel leaders and fraudsters appear on President Joe Biden’s list of nearly 1,500 individuals who he granted clemency Thursday, court records reveal.

As part of his record-setting clemency grant, Biden announced Thursday he would commute sentences for individuals “who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities.” The list of commutations released by the White House includes several high-profile criminals.

One individual, Francesk Shkambi, was initially sentenced in July 2014 to 27 years in prison for leading a criminal organization to “smuggle cocaine and marijuana into the United States from Albania,” according to court records.

“Shkambi also negotiated with a foreign source to traffic cocaine from Mexico to Europe,” the records show. “The jury found Shkambi responsible for trafficking 85 kilograms of cocaine, 4 kilograms of heroin, approximately 122 pounds of marijuana, and 4,000 pills of Ecstasy.”

Shkambi was later set to be released in 2029, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

Jose Valdez, whose sentence Biden commuted, “coordinated the distribution of large quantities of cocaine and marijuana for a drug-trafficking organization based in El Paso, Texas, from March of 2015 through July of 2016,” per court records.

Valdez also “recruited numerous individuals to deliver narcotics to cities throughout the United States.” His scheduled release date was previously set for November 2026, according to the BOP.

David Morrow, who was convicted of “conspiracy to distribute over 50 grams of crack cocaine” and for “maintaining a residence for the purpose of distributing crack cocaine,” also had his sentence commuted by Biden. His expected release date was set for November 2031, per the BOP.

Two of the “most notorious fraudsters” in the Chicago-area — former Dixon, Illinois Comptroller Rita Crundwell and former Sentinel Management Group, Inc. CEO Eric Bloom — also made the list, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Crundwell, who was sentenced in 2013 to nearly 20 years in prison, stole $53.7 million from Dixon over the course of a decade in what many called the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history. Bloom was convicted for defrauding “hundreds of victims” of over $665 million.

“Today, President Biden announced that he is granting clemency to nearly 1,500 Americans – the most ever in a single day – who have shown successful rehabilitation and a strong commitment to making their communities safer,” Biden’s Thursday announcement stated. “The President is commuting the sentences of close to 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities.”



WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 8: President Joe Biden delivers remarks as he hosts the 2024 Kennedy Center honorees in the East Room of the White House on December 8, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images)

Biden also commuted Daniel Monsanto Lopez’s sentence, whose request for release to home confinement a court denied in 2020, noting he was “the organizer and leader of a sophisticated, years-long narcotics smuggling and distribution conspiracy that trafficked at least 20 kilograms of cocaine from Puerto Rico to the Bronx.”

“While Mr. Monsanto Lopez’s motion is long on statistics — he emphasizes in support of his motion that COVID-19 has more strongly impacted Hispanic males such as himself — it is short on specifics, and he has failed to demonstrate extraordinary and compelling reasons for his release,” the court held. Lopez’s release date was set for Dec. 25, 2024, according to the BOP.



The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Exhibit A: as to why the FBI needs to be completely gutted from the top down.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report Thursday revealing that the FBI had more than two dozen confidential human sources in the crowd of protesters on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021.

The 79-page report delved into the FBI's handling of confidential human sources and the bureau's intelligence collection efforts in the lead-up to the Capitol incursion.

There were a total of 26 confidential human sources on the ground on Jan. 6. Of that group, four entered the Capitol and an additional 13 entered the restricted area around the building.

"None of these FBI CHSs were authorized to enter the Capitol or a restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6," the report said.

"The [Office of Inspector General] determined that many of these 26 CHSs had provided information relevant to the January 6 Electoral Certification before the event and that a few CHSs also provided information about the riot as it occurred."

The OIG also uncovered records indicating one confidential human source who entered the Capitol was reimbursed for his travel expenses for being present at the incursion and later, President Joe Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley reacted to the IG's report posting on social media platform X that it "may raise more questions than answers. It confirms that confidential sources did indeed enter the Capitol and restricted areas.

"The question is whether the presence of these sources were revealed to the defense in the hundreds of prosecutions."

He further noted, "The IG suggests that they were not engaged in the core criminal conduct prosecuted on that day. Yet, if revealed to the defense, including hundreds who pleaded guilty, defense counsel would not just take the government's word for what these sources did on that day."

Turley anticipated that House committees will have additional questions about the role of these FBI sources on Jan. 6.

In Jan. 2022, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas questioned then FBI Assistant Executive Director Jill Sanborn during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing regarding how many confidential human sources the FBI had on the ground during the Capitol incursion.

“How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of Jan. 6?” Cruz asked.

“Sir, I’m sure you can appreciate that I can’t go into the specifics of sources and methods,” Sanborn answered.

Cruz then asked the broader question, “Did any FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events of Jan. 6? Yes or no.”

“Sir, I can’t answer that,” replied Sanborn.
“Did any FBI agents or confidential informants commit crimes of violence on Jan. 6?” Cruz then queried.

Sanborn would not say.

The senator continued, “Did any FBI agents or FBI informants actively encourage and incite crimes of violence on Jan. 6?”

“Sir, I can’t answer that,” Sanborn said.

Cruz closed his line of questioning saying, “Ms. Sanborn, a lot of Americans are concerned that the federal government deliberately encouraged illegal and violent conduct on Jan. 6.”

ABC lets him take the summer off, and last night was his last show for the year.

I love it for him. Making a healthy a work / family balance. Selfishly, I'd like to see him more. But, I get it.