Quick Hits

Dr. Oz, head of Medicare and Medicaid, reports we're beingreipped off to the tune of billions:

DrOzCMS @DrOzCMS

UPDATE: It's worse than we thought.

In October, we flagged $1.3 billion in Medicaid funds that 6 states may have unlawfully spent on health care for illegal immigrants.

Since then, we’ve gathered more data and the total has grown to over $1.8 billion across 8 states.

It's against the law to spend federal Medicaid funds on non-emergency healthcare for illegals. If states use their own money to do it, there needs to be a clear paper trail proving that federal dollars didn’t fund those services.

These states failed to provide that for this $1.8 billion. So today, CMS is announcing that we're withholding nearly $300 million from California -- which is by far the worst offender -- until they demonstrate to our satisfaction that they’re spending that money properly.

Medicaid dollars belong to Americans, not illegal immigrants, and we won’t stop until we’ve held rogue states accountable and recovered their misspent funds.

More announcements to come.

US orders partial evacuation of military personnel at Qatar military base.

The United States military has ordered some personnel to evacuate the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar amid ongoing demonstrations in Iran and President Donald Trump's suggestion of possible military action, the Associated Press reported, citing "a U.S. official."

Al Udeid previously came under Iranian fire in the wake of U.S. strikes on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program last year. The scope of the evacuation remains unclear.

Does that mean the strikes are coming? I don't know. Trump announced that he had it on "good authority" that Iran had stopped massacring its people, which sounds like a possible off-ramp to a strike.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was told by Iran that the killings of protesters will stop and that there are no plans for further executions.

Iran has reportedly killed at least 2,000 anti-regime protesters so far as demonstrations engulf the Middle Eastern country. Some foreign leaders have predicted that Iran's regime is in its final days.

Trump said his information was coming from "very important sources on the other side," and that executions, including one of an Iranian shopkeeper, are not expected to take place, despite a notice to the shopkeeper's family indicating otherwise.

"We were told that the killing in Iran is stopping, and there's no plan for executions," Trump told reporters. "The killing has stopped. The executions have stopped. There's no plan for executions or an execution. I've been told that on good authority. We'll find out about it. I'm sure if it happens I'll be very upset."

He doesn't sound super-committed to this claim, which is good, because it's bullshit.

I sure hope that Trump hasn't decided to be Obama's fourth term:

He gave Maduro one last chance to flee the country. But he did require Maduro to leave. Is Trump actually just going to let Khomeini remain in power? Surely we're not going back to the Obama Plan...?

Trump may just be trying to reassure Iran so that it stops killing people -- until he's got the assets in place to take them out:

Open Source Intel @Osint613

BREAKING

The Pentagon ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to leave the South China Sea and head toward the Middle East.

Is this true? I don't know.

Meanwhile: "The Science (TM)" is undefeated.

posted by Ace at 06:24 PM

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