Khan

Pretty much. I mean, once you reach age 62, I think, you qualify for Medicare. (And of course, there's always Medicaid for low-income and unemployed citizens who meet certain criteria.) Even with Medicare, though, you still have no choice but to pay for supplemental insurance, because Medicare isn't going to cover everything. Earlier today, I asked Mama Khan, "Why is it that just about every other country can figure out how to provide healthcare to its citizens, and we can't?" I'm still waiting for her answer. Ruh. Roh.

You are in my thoughts and prayers as well, dragonflies (and marceline). Oh, and Trump knows nothing. As you were. By the way, what is the latest on the Senate hacking investigations? I would watch them on TV, except I think what John McCain and others are doing is an exercise in futility.

Oh, I agree. I'm sorry if I came across as someone who didn't.

And all because the GOP wanted to stick it to President Darkie. Again, many see them as mere "stepping stones." You're not supposed to make a career out of working at the Gap. It's only there to give teenagers spending money and teach them the values of hard work and self-discipline. Ah, but remember: Trump's "historic" and "landslide" victory gave Republicans on Capitol Hill a "mandate" to do that very thing. Sure, we're all about to suffer, but at least part of me will get a big(ly) kick out of seeing complainers who THOUGHT TrumpCo. and Congress would replace the ACA with "something really fantastic" realize that, in fact, they got nothing. Even the diehards who will stand by their man no matter what will twist themselves into yoga-like positions to justify why their own government has left them stranded like the Pharoah's slaves in the desert.

Maybe. I suspect Republicans believe poor people choose to stay poor. (As if poverty were a choice, right?) To them, it's unfathomable for someone who is born impoverished to remain that way so long as he "works hard." After all, isn't the history of this country filled with stories of men (which is to say, men who are Caucasian, heteronormal and God-fearing) who pulled themselves up by their proverbial boot straps, with absolutely no help from anyone but the Good Lord Above? (Actually, for many of those men, God was the LAST thing on their minds as they lied, cheated, stole and even killed in their quest for success. But that's of no importance to anyone still paying attention.) I'm not saying the quintessential rags-to-riches story can't happen anymore. It can...but not for everyone. In fact, it never could. For every man who is born into poverty, works hard and achieves that Gatsby-esque American Dream, there's another man who is born under similiar circumstances, makes the same sacrifices; yet when he dies, he's still poor. It isn't anything they did or didn't do that would explain why they "failed." It's just the hand the life dealt them. Yet, for some damn reason, congressional Republicans, and even many average people, can't (or won't) see that. No, poor people in this country stay poor, because they're lazy, and because the rest of us make their meager existence too comfortable for them. (As if living on stuff like food stamps and Medicaid is the epitome of "leisure class.") Which is how we end up with jackholes like Paul Ryan, who can't understand why many who work in fast food (like he did) don't have the luxury of seeing the job as a stepping stone toward something better (again, like he did); and who believe that the answer to all our problems would be to restrict and/or do away with entitlements and subsidies. And if taking away their social and economic safety nets means they fall even further behind...? Well, then, they just...hafta roll up their sleeves and work a little harder. Because, hard work never killed anyone, right? Except...it has. You can work hard all your life -- sometimes, around the clock -- just to make those ends meet, or at least move closer together; and in the end, all you have to show for it are a nice-looking corpse and a grave your loved ones visit on major holidays.

Actually, I'm with Whoopi Goldberg, who once said (and as always, I am paraphrasing), "If you don't want these women to have abortions, then let's them have those babies and we'll drop them off at YOUR house."

Because, again, that would mean diverting gov't funds away from their pet projects: really big guns.

Well, you make some excellent points, Julia. As do you, Carl. I see BOTH your points.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that it never occurs to most of them that denying low- and no-income women access to abortions potentially means yet another child being raised on the government dole. I'm not saying I'm pro-abortion. But I do believe that whatever goes on in a woman's reproductive system is nobody's business but hers and God's; and that if we are actually concerned more with how this affects our taxes (which I think we are -- IOW, conservatives only employ the moral argument to persuade the public into defunding abortion clinics and organizations such as Planned Parenthood; and if no abortions were funded with federal dollars, then abortion itself wouldn't be an issue at all) then we need to weigh the costs of abortions against supporting another generation of welfare recipients.

Exactly. I will say it once more: I don't understand why people who work in coal and manufacturing are suddenly the ones everyone else has to worry over and give special treatment to when they don't constitute even a tenth of this country's population or labor force. Yes, they are hurting economically; and we need to do more for and better by them. But Come. On. Stop acting as if they are the ONLY ones who live in this country, America, or that they're the only ones who were affected adversely by the Great Recession. Unless you were someone like Donald Trump, no one got away from that crisis unscathed.

Mitch McConnell is like a fly. You shoo him away, and then you get on with your life. Yes.

To be perfect and frank, I am someone who never benefitted one iota from Obamacare. Never received any tax credits, never received any Medicaid (thanks to Mary Fallin, who turned down the extra cash) even though I qualify for it, never got to keep any insurance plan for more than a year, and actually paid MORE in monthly premiums WITH Obamacare than I did without. As a matter of fact, this year, I am without ANY medical insurance for the very first time in my life. But here I am, agreeing with you, Jane. Why? Because, unlike others who were conned by their congressmen into thinking Obamacare needed to be excised with the quickness, I'm actually thinking about more than my own self-interest. I have no insurance, and when I did, I struggled for over a decade to pay for it...but I also know I've been very blessed where others haven't. So, yeah, totally plus-one everything you've said here. (I just felt like sharing a bit of my own situation. Sorry.) I won't even acknowledge the fact Omarosa is now a TrumpCo. employee. There's only so much cray cray the mind can take before it shuts down. I can. Best. Trainwreck. Ever. So, so bigly.

Please save some popcorn for me. I, too, want to see how the Republicans [!@#$%^&*] up health care for this country. No, Obamacare was not perfect and needed repairs. But that's just my point: it needed to be REPAIRED, not repealed. Yep. This. This, too. I will never understand why so many other countries in this world can make gov't.-subsidized health care work but we can't. IMO, no excuses will do.

Are you sure you're not talking about Jill Farren Phelps? (But seriously, you're right.) Has anyone tried reading her new memoir, "Settle for More"? I tried, but I gave up on the smug p.o.s. She's isn't much of a writer OR a(n alleged) journalist. I just hope post-ers elsewhere on this board are wrong in their suspicions that this spells the end for DAYS. As bad as that show is and has been, it doesn't deserve to be killed for that arrogant woman.

Yeah, I'm unhappy about this news. NBC doesn't need someone like Megyn Kelly. But what do you expect from an organization that hired the likes of Matt Lauer and Billy Bush?

Yep.

So, they're scared AND they're scared for their jobs. And they say politicians are out of touch with the working class. I, for one, would love to know what, if anything, the Russians have (allegedly) dug up on the GOP. IDK why, but I feel like that's the key to this mystery. (Yeah, I know, I watched soap operas for too long.)

Which explains why Trump loves the rag sheet so much. As to my original post: Originally, my understanding was that the authorities had detected possible Russian-ordered cyber-hacking in Vermont. Without knowing the actual date(s) on which the alleged hacking had occurred, I suspected 1) it was done pre-Convention, or at least during the primaries, when Bernie Sanders appeared to be surging in some polls; and 2) the Russians (or whoever) attempted to hack into Bernie's cyber accounts in order to find information that they could use against him if and when they needed to. (For example: in case Bernie, and not Hillary, had emerged as the Democratic nominee.) That was my hunch, anyway. Once it was clear Bernie was NOT going to beat Hillary for the nomination, all intel-gathering missions, had there been any ordered, probably ceased. So, IOW, they won't push back, because they're "scurred"?

Here's something that has nagged at me for the past few days: The theory goes that Republicans in both the House and the Senate are reluctant even to stand up to Trump, because they need him to push through their conservative agendas. But wouldn't they be able to carry out their plans now even if Trump were removed from office? After all, they now hold the majority in both houses of Congress. Impeaching him would not change that. Nor would it change the fact that Mike Pence, who would succeed him as President, is ALSO a Republican and ALSO conservative. (In fact, he's probably more conservative than even Trump.) The chances of Repubs succeeding in their overall agenda would be just as good with Pence, IMO, as they would be with Trump. So...what am I missing here?

I'd just like to know why the hell he quoted me. It isn't as if I were the one who posted the original link to the story.

That's because he would write down his answers and then submit them to the press via courier.

Ironically, Michael Storm and Janice Lynde (ex-Laurel) reportedly didn't get along.

And guess who is in Vermont? Yep.

And I'm afraid I've got even less. Four years from now, I think, we will be so desensitized to Trump, so accustomed to living under his brand of authoritarianism, the majority won't think twice about giving him a second term of office. And I'm sorry to say that that majority will include people who, at this moment, are outraged by him and swear he will never be "their President." (They're resisting now, but let's see what happens one, two, three years down the road when all that fire has left their bellies.) It won't matter that Americans will be worse off economically (no jobs, reduced or no entitlements, MASSIVE debts); that another terrorist attack of the same magnitude as 9/11 will occur under his watch (and probably as a consequence of some s**t he started on Twitter); that he and his minions will have rolled back so many liberties in the name of "keeping us safe" and "making America great again" that African-Americans, for one, might as well be back to pickin' cotton on the plantations. TrumpCo. will just spin it all their way like they always do; and people will either just lap it up or shrug and go on about their business. I am not even holding my breath anymore for the mid-term elections. I know what the stats say: that the mid-terms are always bad for the party in control. But I also know that the Democrats have had a poor record when it comes to those, too. (Besides, we also had stacks upon stacks of stats telling us there was no way in Hell that Trump could win. So you'll have to forgive me if I choose from here on out to take stats, polls, predictors/pundits, and even historical precedents with a grain of salt.) Add to that the Republican-led gerrymandering that is bound to go THEIR way and leave ethnic minorities further marginalized and disenfranchised from the electoral process, and as post-ers like Skin have convinced me upthread, the Republicans will ensure their stranglehold on the rest of the nation -- long after Trump and his ilk have left the building, and probably long after the actual demographics that were SUPPOSED to go the Democrats' way, with the US becoming a minority-majority nation, actually do. In other words: we're fucked. And we're gonna stay fucked for a very, very, very, very long time.

Y'all, we're politicizing sitcom characters. We need to stop.