Khan

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.

Naomi would have been for Bernie. She would have found his tousled hair "sexy." No, I'm wrong, she would have been for Trump. I mean, any girl who would hook up with a slickster like Stony Hall....

At a certain point during the campaign, when people were dragging her yet again for Whitewater and Vince Foster, I reached a similar conclusion. But none of that is why I didn't vote for her. Nor, in my heart of hearts, did I not vote for her because of Benghazi, the emails, and the old adage "Where there's smoke, there's fire." If I were being truly candid with myself, I'd have to admit that I didn't vote for Hillary, because I haven't seen her be as authentic as she was when she made that infamous statement on "60 Minutes" about not being the kind of wife who stays home and bakes cookies while listening to Tammy Wynette records (or whatever). If THAT Hillary had run in 2016, I would have voted for her in a flash, because I feel that's always what America needs most (and ironically, what Trump Nation THINKS their new personal Jesus is giving them now). It's just unfortunate to me that that Hillary soon disappeared in the wilds of the Donna Karan pantsuit jungle. Jesus. You're right. "Mama for Mayor" is an excellent way to describe what a Trump administration will be like. But I'm drawing the line at "Facts of Life."

Actually, Pamela Norris, who wrote "Working Mother," was right. I'm just a guy in his late thirties who lives at home with his mom and watches bad sitcoms. Trust me: there will come a time when I will use an episode of "Mama's Family" to explain a complex moral issue facing this country, and you will rue the day you joined this board.

In a way, it's like that episode of "Designing Women" where Mary Jo and Charlene had a falling-out, because Charlene decided she needed to stay home and spend more time with Olivia, and Mary Jo, being a divorced mother of two with no financial or other help from her ex-husband (her choice), felt threatened by her best friend's choice. As Mary Jo said at the episode's climax (and yes, I'm paraphrasing): the "traditional moms" will always accuse the working moms of being selfish yuppies, and the working moms will always accuse the stay-at-home moms of being lazy, but that instead of turning on each other, the stay-at-home moms and the working moms need to stop blaming each other and ban together. And I can't believe I've just cited an episode of "Designing Women" in order to make a point.

A disquieting thought, but...true. Also true. Which is why I feel so...conflicted over Carl and Vee's brilliantly drawn arguments. Because I DO agree that they are a lost cause, incapable of growth or compromise; and I fear that reaching out to them (and not correcting or outright rejecting them) will only result in reinforcing their false ideas and keeping this country as divisive as ever.... And yet, Carl and Vee are right: the Democratic party can't regain any footing if they don't at least try.

Yes, it will. Frankly, though, I don't think Trump and his followers in this country will care all that much. He'll just rip up Obama's executive order, welcome back all those people, and throw them a parade (with us picking up the tab).

That's what I've done. I can't remember who said it, but it makes sense: the best way to understand what's happening in your country is to see how the rest of the world sees it.