Assassination of United Healthcare CEO

[dann]

This week's Bill Maher nonsense pretending to be comedy:

New Rule: Assassination Generation (Real Time with Bill Maher on YouTube, May 9, 2026 – 8:38 min.)
Today’s assassins have popular support with the kids – but how we live right now, in the year we’re living in, in the country we’re living in, doesn’t warrant condoning political violence.

He starts out mentioning four names:

And finally, New Rule: Luigi Manione, Cole Thomas Allen, Tyler Robinson, and the ghost of Thomas Krooks must form a boy band called New Kids on the Glock.

Four young men who killed a total of three people, so one of the four was a would-be assassin if IIRC. Correct me if I'm wrong.
It still doesn't justify the claim that "today’s assassins (!) have popular support with the (!) kids," but Maher continues:

0:20--> Just to just to drive home the point, these are not your father's political assassins. Things have changed. For one thing, today's assassins have popular support with the kids. Up to 40% of America's young adults say violence is okay to achieve a political goal. Wow.
Seems like 5 minutes ago when one of the big causes of the left was gun control.
But now guns are the answer.

Because we all know that political violence is the same thing as political assassinations, don't we? And "up to 40%" = "the kids."
Nearly 40% of Young Americans Say Political Violence Is Acceptable in Certain Circumstances, Harvard Poll Finds (The Harvard Crimson, Dec 4, 2026)
The article is paywalled, but this is the summary from The Harvard Crimson on Instagram:

Nearly 40 percent of young Americans believe that political violence is acceptable under certain circumstances, according to the fall 2025 edition of the Harvard Youth Poll released on Thursday morning.
About 28 percent condoned political violence when “the government violates individual rights,” while 11 percent said political violence is acceptable when someone “encourages violence,” and the same share said it’s justifiable when someone “promotes extremist beliefs.”
A 56 percent majority said political violence was unacceptable under any circumstances.

Not a word about assassinations. Maher appears to be lying – for comedic effect, I guess.
But speaking of political violence, It's (not really) astonishing to see that a recent example of political violence on a much larger scale doesn't occur to Bill Maher:

2026 Minab school attack (Wikipedia)
On 28 February 2026, the first day of the 2026 Iran war, the Shajareh Tayyebeh<Elementary School, providing co-located single-gender education, of the Shahrak-e Al-Mahdi neighbourhood in Minab, Hormozgan province in southern Iran was destroyed by a missile strike. According to witness accounts corroborated by satellite-based analyses, the area of the school was hit by multiple strikes.The roof of the school collapsed on students. 156 civilians were killed, including 120 schoolchildren. As of 15 March 2026, the attack was the deadliest strike in terms of civilian casualties in the ongoing war. Multiple independent investigations concluded that the United States was responsible for the strike.

At this point, the death of 156 Iranian civilians has more or less been forgotten by the U.S. media landscape, but everybody remembers the killing of Charlie Kirk, who – unlike "the left" – was opposed to gun control and thought that the occasional assassination was no reason to restrict access to guns. (See Tyler James Robinson above, one of the four members of Maher's 'boyband'.)
I don't think anybody expects the bombing of the Iranian girls' school to inspire Russell Brand to write any faith-based books:

Russell Brand Reveals How Charlie Kirk’s Murder Inspired Him to Write His New Fath-Based Book (InTouch/Yahoo, May 8, 2026)
“I’m not a celebrity, I’m a broken man trying to hold Christ’s hand,” Brand says ahead of the release of his new book How to Become a Christian in Seven Days*: *May take 50 years of sin and serious f*ck ups to get started (out Tuesday, May 12).
The author says that Christ has “reached” him “through pain and crisis.”

And that is really what is particularly wrong with the assassins of today, according to Maher: They lack the decorum of historical assassins:

2:06--> Tyler Robinson wrote little jokes on the bullets he fired at Charlie Kirk. Things like, "If you're reading this, you're gay. Lol." I mean, John Wilks Booth was a but at least when he did the deed, he said something serious, "Sick semper tyrannis," not, "I f'd your mom."

And John Wilkes Booth said it in Latin! So it would be out of place to point out that Booth was a big fan of the Confederacy and shot the guy in charge of defeating it and thus setting its slaves free. Unlike Trump and Kirk, who are/were trying to revive the Confederacy. It doesn't occur to Bill Maher since his main concern nowadays is to distance himself from Trump, the unpopular president, (for clout!) without criticizing Trump's politics, which he also manages to do in this video:

2:43--> You know, Cole, why do I think this is more about you than the cause? You're running through the metal detector, but maybe you're really chasing clout. Allan wrote that he was consumed by rage thinking about everything this administration has done. Yeah, join the club. Donald Trump is infuriating. I know this personally. That's why whenever I'm around him, I'm so nervous I need a drink right away.
If you're doing that much rage thinking about Trump, you're not really mad at him. You're mad at your life.

I don't know if Maher thinks we forgot how charming he found Trump on that occasion. We might have if Larry David hadn't reminded us.

Maher ends up presenting the real reason for the discontent of young people: They are spoilt, entitled brats who live easy and comfortable lives: "You can get sushi or a weighted blanket delivered in hours." If I didn't know better, I would have thought it was for free. And yet, for some reason, you're "still living with your mom in Torrance."
Maher is on the verge of reenacting the pre-Monty Python sketch about Four Yorkshiremen complaining about the privileged young people of today. In Maher's modernized version, it goes like this:

4:42--> They sell weed in a store now. In a financial pinch, you can sell pictures of your feet. Your biggest hardship is when the Wi-Fi drops and you have to briefly experience the 20th century.

But we had it hard!

5:43--> Gen Z lives (!) are not that bad. Most of our (!) lives here in America are not. How we (!) live right now in the year we're (!) actually living in in the country we're (!) actually living in doesn't warrant condoning political violence.

Because all Gen Z lives are the same = not bad. And political violence is only violence against the elites.

But watch the whole thing: about ICE (allegedly) just killing two (the two we remember).
Google AI says:

As of May 1, 2026, there have been 18 publicized deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in 2026. Following a record high of 33 deaths in 2025, the 2026 death toll is on pace to meet or exceed that number, with deaths occurring at a rate of roughly one every six days.

About Iran (allegedly) killing 30,000 protesters, about USA and Israel killing ... no, of course not! Zionist patriot Maher doesn't mention that! Don't miss out on John Fetterman, Dan Crenshaw and Donna Brazile (DNC chair) laughing at his 'jokes'!

Overtime with Bill Maher: John Fetterman, Dan Crenshaw, Donna Brazile (Real Time with Bill Maher on YouTube, May 9 – 17:07 min.)

 

[dann]

I just explicitly said that communism wasn't the only form of grievance politics. What about that did you not understand?

True.

There is a fundamental difference between having a grievance and forming an ideology around a grievance. If you only have a grievance, then that grievance can be addressed and solved, and then you no longer have a grievance. You can get past it and move on. If your ideology is founded on a grievance, you can never solve it. You will always find something to fit that grievance, and it will never go away, because if it went away, you would have to abandon your ideology. Individuals are occasionally able to do that, but institutions built on grievance can never abandon that grievance. That's why communist revolutions enact never-ending "revolution". The grievance cannot go away. It must not go away. They will fight tooth and claw to make sure it doesn't.

Ziggurat is thinking of justified grievances like those of billionaires, not the grievances of people who have three jobs and struggle to pay the rent:

MAGA Billionaire Marc Andreessen’s Ugly White Grievance Rant (July 15, 2025)
Tim Miller and JVL discuss how Marc Andreessen unleashes a full-throated rant against DEI, immigration, the media, and what he sees as a cultural takeover by the left. Despite being one of the wealthiest and most influential people in tech, Andreessen frames himself as a victim of systemic bias—sparking a conversation about billionaire grievance, hypocrisy, and the broader culture war within Silicon Valley.

Greed is good! Grievance is good! Except when ... you know!
It is not as if the Epstein class bought a whole ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ administration to pursue their goals. It is not as if they will fight tooth and claw to make sure their revolution succeeds.

 

[dann]

ProPublica on bsky, May 9, 2026
Some doctors with a history of being sued for malpractice find new careers working for insurance companies, where they make decisions on thousands of patients' treatment requests.
(Published 2023 with @capitolforum.bsky.social)

Doctors With Histories of Big Malpractice Settlements Now Work for Insurers
Doctors working for health insurers can rule on 10,000 or more requests for care a year. At least a dozen were hired by major insurance companies after being disciplined by state medical boards or mak...

www.propublica.org

Doctors working for health insurers can rule on 10,000 or more requests for care a year. At least a dozen were hired by major insurance companies after being disciplined by state medical boards or making multiple or outsized malpractice payments.

 

[Ziggurat]

Sweet. I've never seen someone try to pivot a conversation so fast before in my life. Notice how it doesn't say "only" when it refers to the "most vulnerable"? That's because it happens to plenty of others as well, of all ages. Those are just the people that are "most vulnerable".

Sure, it happens at younger ages too. For example, it happens to anorexics, and that tends to hit teens and young adults.

But starvation from lack of access to food isn't really much of a thing in this country. Which, again, is why so many poor people are obese.

First you strawman TZG's point

That's rich. TGZ's point was a strawman. Have you forgotten? He said, "I notice that you are arguing for letting people starve to protect profiteers." I argued for nothing of the sort. Even if I concede every argument you're making here, that still wouldn't mean I was taking the position TGZ claimed I had. So don't lecture me about strawmen, particularly in this exchange with TGZ.

 

[plague311]

Sure, it happens at younger ages too. For example, it happens to anorexics, and that tends to hit teens and young adults.

But starvation from lack of access to food isn't really much of a thing in this country. Which, again, is why so many poor people are obese.

Cool, weasel words noted. Thanks, I'll let you get back to your standard gaslighting nonsense. The rest isn't worth me addressing.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Getting back on topic, Wikipedia says:-

Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic wrote that to some, Mangione is an "expression of the depth of righteous anger present in American life right now, a symbol of justified violence"... A December 2024 NORC at the University of Chicago poll found that most American adults believe that health insurance companies share a moderate amount or a great deal of responsibility for Thompson's death because of their denials for health care coverage and/or profits made by those companies.

Attempting to dismiss this 'righteous anger' by painting Mangione's actions as equivalent to communism won't work. As he wrote in a review of the Unabomber's manifesto:-

"'Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators" and "When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive"

Mangione's politics have been described as neither left nor right, but 'anti-system' - a view shared by a large proportion of the US population. He was right about violence being necessary when other forms of communication fail. The question is when does that happen? You only have to look at the level of sympathy for Luigi vs his victim to see where we are right now. And it's getting worse. If the system doesn't redeem itself soon there's a real danger of it boiling over into mass violence.

This isn't a Left vs Right thing. Much of the anger is shared by people who voted for Trump on the basis that he would 'drain the swamp', not make it deeper. This isn't a Marxist class struggle, but a fight agasinst the 'Eptsein Class' of corporate Fascism and woke Elites. When people say it's not worth voting because 'both sides are the same' they don't necessarily mean that both parties are too right or left for them - they mean that the system itself is rotten and needs to be reformed. If that can't be done from within the system, what alternative do they have?

It's a real shame that someone had to die to get the discussion out in the open. Even more shameful is people minmizing it. If we can't communicate then violence will be necessary, and it won't end well.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I mean, the US only exists because they had a violent revolution after talking, reasoning, and negotiating failed. The Founding Fathers weren't all a bunch of bloodthirsty maniacs; they were rational -- more rational by far than most of their successors-- and they concluded that violence was the necessary course.

 

[jimbob]

I have split a load of posts to a thread What is Communism?

Some will probably be moved to AAH as well as there's a lot of bickering here as well as off topic

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jimbob

 

[shemp]

Getting back on topic, Wikipedia says:-

"Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic wrote that to some, Mangione is an "expression of the depth of righteous anger present in American life right now, a symbol of justified violence"... A December 2024 NORC at the University of Chicago poll found that most American adults believe that health insurance companies share a moderate amount or a great deal of responsibility for Thompson's death because of their denials for health care coverage and/or profits made by those companies."​

An example of those profits I found today:

His wife’s terminal cancer drug was quoted at $13,000 monthly. He found it for $40

Exclusive: After the devastating news of a terminal cancer diagnosis, Debbie Rhodes and her husband Randy were delivered a gut punch about her life-saving medication. J.R. Duren reports

www.the-independent.com

When Debbie Rhodes was diagnosed nine years ago with a terminal blood and bone marrow cancer,an unlikely hero would ultimately come to the rescue: Shark Tank star and billionaire, Mark Cuban.

Rhodes, 50, was initially prescribed imatinib, a drug proven to manage chronic myeloid leukemia as a chronic condition and extend patients’ lives by a decade or more. To the relief of Rhodes, and her husband Randy, the drug was covered by their insurance plan. That relief was reinforced when their local pharmacist in Leawood, Kansas, told them out-of-pocket costs for the medication ranged from $13,000 to $15,000 each month.

The medication worked wonders: After starting treatment, Debbie’s blood work showed the drug was keeping her cancer from progressing and it continues to work for her today.

But two years ago, the couple was delivered a gut punch after Randy, an attorney, discovered his new health insurance policy didn’t cover Debbie’s medication. The couple believed they had little choice but to pay thousands of dollars each month for imatinib, and feared burning through their life savings.

"When we learned it wasn’t going to be covered, there was a little bit of shock and concern on our part,” Randy told The Independent. “We were blessed to be in a situation where we could’ve swung it, but [by] never retiring, getting rid of our assets - it would’ve been a liquidating event for us over a period of many years.”

Then he came across Cost Plus Drugs, an online pharmacy founded in 2022 by former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. The billionaire entrepreneur founded the company to bring transparency to a corner of healthcare that thrived on secrecy, he explained in a podcast last year.

“It became very obvious the more I dug in, that there was zero transparency, no transparency, and that there were a lot of vested interests that wanted opacity,” Cuban told Hims House. “They want it to be as opaque as possible so that people can't make good decisions when it comes to their healthcare.”

Cost Plus Drug’s operation and others like it have been nothing short of revolutionary in U.S. healthcare. Cuban’s company negotiates prices directly with manufacturers, cutting out insurers and middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers who tend to drive up drug prices. The company then charges its customers a 15 percent markup and and modest fees for labor and shipping, resulting in affordable prescriptions.

The price tag for imatinib on Cost Plus Drugs? Less than $40.

Gee, I can't think of any reason people would be pissed off about this, would you?

 

[dann]

John Oliver BEATS Lawsuit That Tried To Silence Him (Ring of Fire on YouTube, June 8, 2026 – 5:17 min.)
0:06--> He sat in a hearing and explained why it was acceptable to leave a man with cerebral palsy, a man who physically can't clean himself, sitting in his own waist for days at a time.
This doctor's reasoning: People are allowed to be dirty. And he went on to say, 'I would allow him to be dirty for a couple of days'.
That's our healthcare right now. That is America.
A doctor deciding that another human being's basic dignity wasn't worth the price of a caregivers's hour to clean him. And that doctor was the subject of a segment done by John Oliver a couple of years back. The segment was on how privatized state Medicaid programs cut costs by cutting care.
Oliver played the man's own words back to him. And that doctor's response to being quoted accurately
was to sue to sue John Oliver for defamation, claiming that John Oliver feigned outrage for ratings and profits. Thankfully thankfully this week a federal judge threw that whole damn lawsuit out.

 

[Emily's Cat]

What does this have to do with this murder?

 

[Ziggurat]

What does this have to do with this murder?

Health care people do bad things, therefore let's kill them.

 

[Steve]

Health care people do bad things, therefore let's kill them.

Health care EXECUTIVES in the USA let people die so as to increase profits, Does not justify killing them to my mind, but I can understand how some more extreme persons may feel otherwise.

 

[plague311]

Health care EXECUTIVES in the USA let people die so as to increase profits, Does not justify killing them to my mind, but I can understand how some more extreme persons may feel otherwise.

I said this same ◊◊◊◊ and got jumped on for it. I don't see certain posters (thank God) but those that shall not be named implied that me saying I understood why it happened meant that I condoned it and was happy it happened.

I'm assuming the same trash pandas that told me that back then are still posting here now.

 

[Steve]

I said this same ◊◊◊◊ and got jumped on for it. I don't see certain posters (thank God) but those that shall not be named implied that me saying I understood why it happened meant that I condoned it and was happy it happened.

I'm assuming the same trash pandas that told me that back then are still posting here now.

MAGArats gotta do their thing! Their unspoken position is that letting poor people die in order to increase profits is a worthwhile endeavor, the way of free enterprise.

 

[plague311]

MAGArats gotta do their thing! Their unspoken position is that letting poor people die in order to increase profits is a worthwhile endeavor, the way of free enterprise.

Yeah, but if you say that to them then you're being mean! "Quit calling me out for what I am! Your party is the party of 'inclusion', you have to accept my nonsense" or whatever dumb ◊◊◊◊ they've moved on to next.

I've never seen a group simultaneously say we all have to take personal responsibility but drop any responsibility for the ◊◊◊◊ they say so fast.

 

[Ranb]

DA's office says it won't use statements Luigi Mangione made at station house following arrest

DA's office says it won't use statements Luigi Mangione made at station house following arrest | ABC Audio Digital Syndication

digital.abcaudio.com

The Manhattan district attorney's office signaled Tuesday it would exclude statements that accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione made while in custody at the Altoona, Pennsylvania, Police Department following his following his arrest on Dec. 9, 2024.

What is he going to be able to plead this down to? Littering?

 

[The Atheist]

What is he going to be able to plead this down to? Littering?

That seems fair, I'm sure it made a mess on the street.

Given the victim was probably guilty of hundreds of deaths and faced no legal consequences, anything harsher seems a bit unfair.

 

[novaphile]

DA's office says it won't use statements Luigi Mangione made at station house following arrest

DA's office says it won't use statements Luigi Mangione made at station house following arrest | ABC Audio Digital Syndication

digital.abcaudio.com

What is he going to be able to plead this down to? Littering?

Improper disposal of a carcass?

 

[theprestige]

At least we all agree that no matter what he gets away with, what he actually did was murder.