Elizabeth Warren, CEO-Assassin Cheerleader

“People can only be pushed so far,” sitting Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) told HuffPost on Tuesday, in response to the killing of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

“The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system,” said Warren. “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far,” she added.

Violence is never the answer, BUT is always a strange sentence construction. Generally when you add but it seems like you’re justifying whatever preceded it. Boilerplate condemnation rings a little hollow when you throw that little three-letter word in after. “This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”

A firestorm followed. Yesterday, Warren went back to the media and clarified: “Violence is never the answer. Period.” And “I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder.”

Other Democrats, like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, managed to get it right, saying: “In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to express policy differences or a viewpoint.”

One thing this whole discourse has really missed is that the killer, Luigi Mangione, appears to have come from a rich family seemingly with both health care and, ostensibly, the means to handle his medical costs. He appears to have had a successful operation on his back—a spinal fusion which cured his debilitating pain. He’s not some man of the people, some folk hero who was slighted by the medical system—or if he was, he didn’t mention that in his manifesto or anywhere in his hefty digital footprint, including lots of Reddit messages on his experience with spinal surgery. And even if he were, killing a CEO is evidence that you’re clinically insane with very little to teach the rest of us. For Warren to act like this is warranted or understandable behavior is heinous. Mangione wasn’t “pushed so far” by an unfair system; he appears to have been the recipient of a difficult-to-perform and relatively new surgery that helped to cure his pain, the likes of which we only have access to in health care systems that prize medical innovation through profit motive.

Defense bill passes: Yesterday, the House passed an $895 billion defense policy bill despite major opposition from Democrats. Of course, it wasn’t the high price tag that created the controversy: It was a culture war over transitions for minors.

“The hang up in the bill—which took months of negotiations between parties—centers on a provision that would prohibit the military’s Tricare health system from covering gender dysphoria treatments ‘that could result in sterilization’ for children under 18,” reports Politico. I wonder, first, how many service members using the health care system have transgender minor children. I wonder, second, why advocacy groups continue to portray gender dysphoria treatments as life-saving and medically necessary when evidence keeps emerging that challenges these commonly touted activist lines. But negotiations were repeatedly derailed by this cluster of issues.

From Politico: 

Negotiators dropped the most hotly contested provisions, such as proposals to roll back the Pentagon’s policy to reimburse costs for troops who travel to obtain abortions, bar the Defense Department from providing gender affirming care for transgender troops and gutting the agency’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The bill now heads to the Senate.

Scenes from New York: Within New York, “there is an emerging push for the state to recognize cannabis’s sacramental use so that members of ritualistic cultures like Rastafarianism can grow and sell it in accordance with their beliefs,” reports The New York Times. Some Rastafarians “want sacramental use defined in the law, licenses to cultivate and dispense cannabis set aside specifically for religious communities, and other changes that allow them to sell and consume cannabis during ceremonies.”

• “Collectively, China and Russia are now pooling their expertise to develop the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). Both nations worked on a joint roadmap targeting operational capabilities by the 2030s, with plans for modular habitats, robotic rovers, and in-situ resource utilization,” writes Ryan McEntush for Pirate Wires. “China’s Tiangong Space Station, launched in 2021, serves as a blueprint for sustainable space operations, while Russia’s Luna program contributes decades of experience. Together, they are challenging Western-led space governance. While Sino-Russian efforts remain scientific today, it is crucial to understand that these missions are likely precursors to more assertive territorial ambitions. Antarctica provides a telling parallel.” (Read on for a description of what the “tobacco of space” could be.)
• “All coups are different, but they’re all the same, because all of them depend on taking hold, not of the nation, but simply of the repressive machinery of the state,” Pentagon consultant/Bolivian cattle rancher/coup expert Edward Luttwak tells Statecraft‘s Santi Ruiz. “So I wrote a description of how to do that. My first words are ‘Overthrowing governments is not easy,’ and I tell you how to do it step by step.”
• “France on Wednesday called on Israel to respect the ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity’ of neighboring Syria and to withdraw its forces from the Golan demilitarized zone between the two countries,” reports Politico. “‘As stated by the U.N., any military deployment in the buffer zone between Israel and Syria is a violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement which must be respected by its signatories, Israel and Syria,’ said a French foreign ministry spokesman at a press briefing. ‘France calls on Israel to withdraw from this area.’”
• Elon Musk just became the world’s first person to reach $400 billion in net worth.
• The Federal Reserve looks likely to cut interest rates next week.
• CORRECT TAKE:

Stop giving people more highly speculative doomer excuses to procrastinate on what’s likely to be among the most meaningful and joyful steps in their lives. https://t.co/s3tFsZv6rb

— Zach Weissmueller (@TheAbridgedZach) December 12, 2024

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