paral

How to Negotiate Medical Bills to Reduce Your Medical Debt

By Mike Valles, 8/19/2024, The Epoch Times

Going to a hospital for any lengthy stay can result in large medical bills. Sometimes, these bills are much larger than you expect and may be more than you can pay—even if you can get a monthly payment plan. If you do not see how you can pay the bill, even if you must tighten your belt, there are ways you can negotiate medical bills, which can give you some relief.( Read the rest of the article... )

A Defiant Biden Says Only the ‘Lord Almighty’ Could Drive Him From the Race

By Michael D. Shear, NYT, July 5, 2024

President Biden on Friday dismissed concerns about his age, his mental acuity and polls showing him losing his re-election bid, saying in a prime-time interview that his sharpness is tested every day while he is “running the world.” He vowed to drop out only if “the Lord Almighty” told him to.

( Read the rest of the article... )

It seems to me that Nancy P is ”the Lord Almighty”

What does Henry Kissinger’s diplomacy have to teach the world?

Economist, Nov 30th 2023

A grasp of the subtle interplay between interests, values and the use of force is still useful

( Read the rest of the article... )

Free Speech Will Save Our Democracy

By Emily Bazelon, NYT, Oct. 13, 2020

The First Amendment in the age of disinformation.

This summer, a bipartisan group of about a hundred academics, journalists, pollsters, former government officials and former campaign staff members convened for an initiative called the Transition Integrity Project. By video conference, they met to game out hypothetical threats to the November election and a peaceful transfer of power if the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, were to win. Dividing into Team Trump and Team Biden, the group ran various scenarios about counting ballots and the litigation and protests and violence that could follow a contested election result. The idea was to test the machinery of American democracy.

( Read the rest of the article... )

Balloon Incident Reveals More Than Spying as Competition With China Intensifies

By David E. Sanger, NYT, Feb. 5, 2023

There is nothing new about superpowers spying on one another, even from balloons. But for pure gall, there was something different this time.

It may be months before American intelligence agencies can compare the audacious flight of a Chinese surveillance balloon across the country to other intrusions on America’s national security systems, to determine how it ranks.

After all, there is plenty of competition.

( Read the rest of the article... )

How Elon Musk’s Starlink is helping Ukraine in the fight against Russia

Indianexpress.com, Jan 10, 2023

Starlink services are easily accessible even in combat environments, and are difficult to disrupt. Here is how.

Starlink has emerged as a crucial communication tool for Ukraine’s armed forces because their own mediums of communication were compromised by Russian hackers.

( Read the article... )

What If Ukraine Wins?

Victory in the War Would Not End the Conflict With Russia

By Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage, Foreign Affairs, June 6, 2022

In recent days, many Western observers of the war in Ukraine have begun to worry that the tide is turning in Russia’s favor. Massive artillery fire is yielding incremental Russian gains in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, and Russia is bringing in new forces. Ukrainian troops are drained and exhausted. Russia is trying to create a fait accompli and to make reality conform to its imperial ambitions through “passportization”—the quick provision of Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens in Russian-occupied areas—and the forced introduction of Russian administrative structures in Ukrainian territory. The Kremlin likely intends to occupy eastern and southern Ukraine indefinitely and to eventually move on Odessa, a major port city in southern Ukraine and a hub of commerce that connects Ukraine to the outside world.

Looking at the big picture, however, things look less than rosy for Moscow.

( Read the rest of the article... )

The Afghanistan Papers, Part 1: At War With The Truth

By Craig Whitlock Dec. 9, 2019

U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive [Washington] Post investigation found.

Aconfidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

( Read the rest of the story... )

Stockton’s Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off

by Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, Mar 03, 2021

A new study of the city’s program that sent cash to struggling individuals finds dramatic changes.
Two years ago, the city of Stockton, California, did something remarkable: It brought back welfare.

( Read the rest of the story... )

Busting the Myth of ‘Welfare Makes People Lazy’

by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, Mar 08, 2018

Cash assistance isn’t just a moral imperative that raises living standards. It’s also a critical investment in the health and future careers of low-income kids.

( Read the rest of the story... )

Welfare Money Is Paying for a Lot of Things Besides Welfare

by Zach Parolin, The Atlantic, Jun 13, 2019

Instead of giving cash assistance to poor families, states are widening the racial divide.
What do a Christian overnight camp, abstinence-only sex education, and pro-marriage advertisements all have in common? They’ve all been funded with money that used to provide cash assistance to low-income families.

( Read the rest of the story... )

Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others?

By Siddhartha Mukherjee The New Yorker, Feb 22, 2021 (March 1, 2021 Issue)
Long Read

While the virus has ravaged rich nations, reported death rates in poorer ones remain relatively low. What probing this epidemiological mystery can tell us about global health.

Many regions report a covid-19 death rate that’s a hundredth of the U.S. rate.

( Read the rest of the story... )
Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of “The Emperor of All Maladies,” for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is “The Gene: An Intimate History.”


Also:

Living arrangements of older persons around the world

Residential long-term care beds (per 10 000 population)

Does the Constitution Allow Impeachment of an Ex-President?

Robert G. Natelson, Epoch Times, Jan 29, 2021

Does the U.S. Senate have jurisdiction to try former President Donald Trump? There’s no shortage of absolute yes and no answers floating around the media.

But here’s the real answer: We don’t know.

Before going further, let me clarify one thing: I believe that, on the merits, the article of impeachment against the former president is absurd.

But whether any president can be impeached and convicted after he leaves office is an entirely different issue.

( Read the rest of the article... )

Robert G. Natelson is a leading constitutional scholar and former constitutional law professor. He is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver. Among his many constitutional publications is “New Evidence on the Constitution’s Impeachment Standard: ‘high … Misdemeanors’ Means Serious Crimes,” Federalist Society Review, vol 21, p. 24 (2020).


Also:
"The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said And Meant" by Robert G. Natelson

"Mutual Destruction: How Trump’s Trial Became A Tale Of Constitutional Noir" by Jonathan Turley

FB - Google secret deal
Facebook was going to compete with Google for some advertising sales but backed away from the plan after the companies cut a preferential deal, according to court documents.

( Read the article... )

Explainer: Dueling Electors and the Upcoming Joint Session of Congress

Zachary Stieber, The Epoch Times, December 17, 2020

Presidential candidates in the United States win elections by winning the most electoral votes.

The Electoral College system apportions a certain number of votes to each state. When voters in a state vote for a party’s candidate, they’re actually casting a vote for that party’s slate of electors, or people chosen to cast electoral votes.

Those electoral votes are counted by Congress. If a candidate gets 270 or more, they win the presidency.

Dueling Electors

In seven states on Dec. 14, a slate of Democratic electors chose Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Republican electors, even though Biden was certified as the winner in the states, also cast votes for President Donald Trump.

( Read the rest of the story... )

Ex-Trump Campaign Manager Parscale Names 4 Issues That Hurt Campaign, Reveals 2 Significant Numbers
DailyWire.com, Ryan Saavedra, Dec 2, 2020

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale gave his first media interview on Tuesday evening since being removed from the campaign in September and highlighted several issues that he believes severely harmed the campaign.

( Read the rest of the story... )


Transcript

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