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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 8:49:18 GMT -8
Why do seagulls fly over the sea? Because if they flew over the bay they'd be bagels! A Hostile TakeoverDonald Trump's legal defense fund website appeared to have been taken over Friday night by someone who opposes the former president. Visits to the Patriot Legal Defense Fund site – set up in recent weeks to help pay mounting legal bills for the former president and his allies – were met with an altered home page. A large banner reads, "Hey! America is already great." BeforeAfter |
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 8:53:28 GMT -8
Old, Dumb, and Broke
Former President Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was indicted by a Fulton County Superior Court grand jury Monday along with the 2024 MAGA hopeful and 17 others on charges related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election, is drowning in debt, according to CNN.
Per the report, the former New York mayor is facing "hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and sanctions" after representing the ex-President.
"He is having financial difficulties," the ex-mayor's "lawyers said in a filing this month in a civil defamation case brought by two Georgia election workers against" Guiliani. He "needs more time to pay the attorneys' fees and would like the opportunity to seek an extension from the Court," they said.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?
CNN reports:
Not including standard legal fees, Giuliani faces nearly $90,000 in sanctions from a judge in a defamation case, a $20,000 monthly fee to a company to host his electronic records, $15,000 or more for a search of his records, and even a $57,000 judgment against his company for unpaid phone bills.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 8:56:45 GMT -8
The Odd Couple Want Us to Read the ConstitutionAccording to a renowned Harvard law professor and a distinguished retired conservative judge, regardless of how Donald Trump's Washington D.C. trial plays out over an alleged plot to overturn the voters' will in the 2020 presidential election, he is already ineligible to hold office again based upon provisions contained within the U.S. Constitution. In a comprehensive column for The Atlantic, Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School, and retired conservative Judge Michael Luttig who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, maintained that the former president has already disqualified himself based upon his actions with regard to the Jan. 6 insurrection and a guilty verdict in Judge Tanya Chutkan's courtroom isn't even needed to put congressional action in motion. According to the two legal scholars, based upon their research of the Fourteenth Amendment ratified in 1868, Trump's Jan. 6 complicity and election interference plots fulfill should bar him from office -- but Congress and teh country needs the will to enforce it Writing that the "often-overlooked Section 3, automatically excludes from future office and position of power in the United States government ...any person who has taken an oath to support and defend our Constitution and thereafter rebels against that sacred charter, either through overt insurrection or by giving aid or comfort to the Constitution’s enemies," the two legal experts made the case that former president went well beyond that. The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President AgainIf donald trump were to be reelected, how could any citizen trust that he would uphold the oath of office he would take upon his inauguration? As recently as last December, the former president posted on Truth Social his persistent view that the last presidential election was a “Massive Fraud,” one that “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” No person who sought to overthrow our Constitution and thereafter declared that it should be “terminated” and that he be immediately returned to the presidency can in good faith take the oath that Article II, Section 1 demands of any president-elect “before he enter on the Execution of his Office.”
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 9:01:27 GMT -8
A Bigger Crook Than Dr. Evil
Georgia man sentenced to 27 years in jail over $463 million genetic testing scheme
A Georgia man who was convicted late last year for his role in a $463 million genetic testing scheme to defraud Medicare was sentenced to 27 years in prison on Friday, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.
Minal Patel, 44, of Atlanta, owned LabSolutions LLC, a lab enrolled with Medicare that performed sophisticated genetic tests. Patel conspired with patient brokers, telemedicine companies, and call centers to target Medicare beneficiaries with telemarketing calls falsely stating that Medicare covered expensive cancer genetic tests, according to prosecutors.
Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people over 65 and the disabled.
After the Medicare beneficiaries agreed to take a test, Patel paid kickbacks and bribes to patient brokers to obtain signed doctors' orders authorizing the tests from telemedicine companies, prosecutors said. To conceal the kickbacks and bribes, Patel required patient brokers to sign sham contracts, they said.
Patel was convicted by a federal jury in Florida late last year of health care fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and payment of illegal health care kickbacks.
From July 2016 through August 2019, LabSolutions submitted more than $463 million in claims to Medicare, including for medically unnecessary genetic tests, of which Medicare paid over $187 million, the Justice Department said. In that time frame, Patel personally received over $21 million in Medicare proceeds, prosecutors added.
Patel was indicted in 2019 on charges of healthcare fraud and paying and receiving kickbacks to and from marketers who collected cheek swabs from patients for genetic testing.
Back then, U.S. federal agents raided genetic testing laboratories, and 35 people were criminally charged in four states in a crackdown on genetic testing fraud that officials said caused $2.1 billion in losses to federal healthcare insurance programs.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 9:03:49 GMT -8
You've Got to Fight For Your Right to Party... And Your Right to Vote
Federal judges in Georgia and Texas have ruled against key provisions of two controversial election laws passed two years ago as the Republican Party sought to tighten voting rules after former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential contest.
U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez struck down a provision of Texas’ law requiring that mail voters provide the same identification number they used when they registered to vote. He ruled the requirement violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act because it led to people being unable to cast ballots due to a matter irrelevant to whether they are registered.
The change led to skyrocketing mail ballot rejections in the first election after the law passed in September 2021 and was targeted in a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice.
“This ruling sends a clear message that states may not impose unlawful and unnecessary requirements that disenfranchise eligible voters seeking to participate in our democracy,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement after the ruling, which came Thursday.
The Texas Attorney General’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Georgia, voting rights advocates got a more mixed set of rulings Friday from U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee.
He temporarily prohibited officials from enforcing penalties against people who provide food and water to voters waiting in line as long as they are more than 150 feet from the building where voting is taking place. He also blocked a part of the law that requires voters to provide their birthdate on absentee ballot envelopes.
But Boulee rejected the groups’ claims that certain restrictions imposed by the law deny voters with disabilities meaningful access to absentee voting.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 9:04:51 GMT -8
The New Camp David Accord
A major Biden achievement is coming to fruition this week
It is hard to exaggerate the significance of Friday’s summit at Camp David among President Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. This represents another major step toward the establishment of a new trilateral alliance that could help all three nations cope with the growing threats from North Korea and China in a world destabilized by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Such a summit would have been unthinkable only two years ago. The primary acclaim must go to the courageous leader of South Korea and the pragmatic leader of Japan for moving beyond historical grievances. But the Biden administration also deserves considerable credit for enabling this rapprochement.
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 9:06:21 GMT -8
And He Didn't Look Normal Back Then
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 9:08:00 GMT -8
He Didn't Go to Jared
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 9:11:40 GMT -8
Hope for Dementia?Although the percentage of older people with dementia is thankfully decreasing, from 13% to 10% in those over 70 from 2011-2019, the absolute number of people with dementia is actually increasing. That’s because the share of the U.S. population that is 65 and over ballooned by 38.6% from 2010-2020, in large part due to baby boomers (shown in dark blue below) crossing the 65-year mark. They’ll keep on doing that until 2031, so the 65+ population will continue to grow quickly until then. We’re still not very good at all at treating dementia, much less reversing it, but something quite intriguing was established a few years ago in a UCSF-Stanford study: Exposure of an aged animal to young blood can counteract and reverse pre-existing effects of brain aging at the molecular, structural, functional and cognitive level. And that’s great, but it sounds like something only vampires or Montgomery Burns would arrange. Blood isn’t exactly easy to get, and we already need it for plenty of other things like trauma, blood loss during surgery, kidney failure, etc. So it’s been really important to try and figure out what exactly in young blood is responsible for these improvements in brain function in older animals and how to apply this to humans. If it’s one or two factors, we could probably use yeast or bacteria to manufacture zillions of pounds of them as pharmaceuticals, learn how to modify them for more stability and efficacy, and even use them in a preventative way. If you’re at risk for cognitive decline, you could get an infusion or a shot once every 8 weeks or so. And if there’s one thing a pharmaceutical company lo-o-oves, it’s a medicine you have to take regularly and that they can charge the insurance company a lot for, so you bet your sweet bippy it will get developed ASAP the minute we find out what it is. Well, now there is suddenly a barrage of evidence that indeed pins the effect pretty squarely on just a single blood factor: a protein called platelet factor 4 (PF4). Three independent groups were looking for different ways to extend cognitive function during aging, and they all serendipitously hit on that same factor. They’ve just released a trio of papers, all open access. Yay! These appear in Nature, Nature Aging, and Nature Communications published August 16 and were led respectively by Dr. Saul Villeda (UCSF), Dr. Dena Dubal (UCSF), and Dr. Tara Walker (University of Queensland). Three independent studies say that blood platelet factor PF4 prevents and reverses cognitive decline
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 9:18:21 GMT -8
The Wave of Immigration From a Country None of Us Can Find on a Map.Aissata Sall was scrolling through WhatsApp in May when she first learned about the new route to the United States. For Ibrahima Sow, the discovery came on TikTok a few weeks later. By the time their paths crossed at the tidy one-story brick house in Cincinnati, they had encountered hundreds of other Mauritanians, nearly all of them following a new path surging in popularity among younger migrants from the West African nation, thanks largely to social media. “Four months ago, it just went crazy,” said Oumar Ball, who arrived in Cincinnati from Mauritania in 1997 and recently opened his home to Sow, Sall and more than a dozen other new migrants. “My phone hasn’t stopped ringing.” The spike in migration was made possible by the discovery this year of a new route through Nicaragua, where relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and a handful of other foreign nationals to purchase a low-cost visa without proof of onward travel. As word of the entry point spreads, travel agencies and paid influencers have taken to TikTok to promote the trip, selling packages of flights that leave from Mauritania, then connect through Turkey, Colombia and El Salvador, and wind up in Managua, Nicaragua. From there, the migrants, along with asylum seekers from other nations, are whisked north by bus with the help of smugglers. The influx of Mauritanians has surprised officials in the U.S. It came without a triggering event — such as a natural disaster, coup or sudden economic collapse — suggesting the growing power of social media to reshape migration patterns: From March to June, more than 8,500 Mauritanians arrived in the country by crossing the border illegally from Mexico, up from just 1,000 in the four months prior, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. The new arrivals likely now outnumber the estimated 8,000 foreign-born Mauritanians previously living in the U.S., about half of whom are in Ohio. Many arrived in the 1990s as refugees after the Arab-led military government began expelling Black citizens. Thousands more Mauritanians are making their way to the US, thanks to a route spread on social media
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Post by mhbruin on Aug 19, 2023 9:25:25 GMT -8
Dangerous levels of PFAS detected in water for 27 million. Did the EPA find it near you?Toxic “forever chemicals” are far more widespread through the country’s drinking water systems than previously known, according to new EPA data released Thursday. A USA TODAY analysis shows hundreds of community water systems, serving more than 27 million Americans, found at least one of 29 types of these chemicals in concentrations that exceed the EPA’s new, lower reporting limits. Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, or PFAS, are a family of chemicals widely used for years in nonstick coatings, water-repellent fabrics and other household and industrial products, but they’re now known to increase risk for some cancers, among other harmful health effects. Some call PFAS 'forever chemicals' because they're nearly indestructible and can build up over time in human bodies.
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