Last question for Cotton was from an eight-year-old who wanted to know why Trump wants to use money to build a wall to keep out Mexicans that the kid's family might like instead of let children watch PBS Kids.

ETA: my bad, he was "almost 8, but actually I'm seven"

He's just looking out for us, bro. It's pretty much like how Republicans calling Obama a secret Kenyan Muslim Socialist atheist resulted in them losing every election since. We would not want to stir the passions of our base.

Surprised McCain would even be mentioned in comparison to the Obama birther thing. He was born on a US military post in Panama to two American-born citizens. For citizenship purposes that may as well have been Yankee Stadium.

Also he is white and his middle name isn't Hussein LDO

but tbh I haven't actually seen his long form birth certificate

They are scurred. Although 100% chance the introduce meaningless nonsense as a repeal and replace.

i hope they haven't figured out that they can get away with just lying about what's in their replacement bill

Republicans really want to kick healthcare back to the states in totality? Talk about the biggest hot potato give up of all time.

Obama was born in Hawaii. For citizenship purposes that's the end of the discussion.

Yup.

Republicans want to repeal ACA (ObamaCare) for 3 reasons:

1. After repeal, they can then cut taxes for the rich. Bigly.

2. Trump ran on the anti-Obama platform (he inherited a mess, a mess with the lowest unemployment and largest economic growth in 8 years)

3. Obama hangover plus #2 is forcing their hand to retain their base.

Hence replace, repeal, shred, whatever...

It seems to me to help a lot of people. It helped my brother when he was in law school. It helps people with pre-existing conditions. You're seeing it in these town halls. SAD!

I've said this before, but the Dems should start courting Trump on single payer. Before the campaign, he voiced support for single payer. Everyone being covered makes him a big hero like he wants, and he's pretty much the only way to get the GOP to play along. A Nixon going to China situation.

Nice post.

I completely agree with whomever said Dems should be shouting single-payer for the next 4 years every time healthcare comes up just like repeal/replace was. It's become exceedingly obvious these morons just used it as a way to stir up their base and actually had zero plans for the replace part.

Big Trump fan on my FB just claimed that the only reason the Trump Secret Service detail costs more than Obama's is because all of the "liberals wackos" are so crazy that they present more of a threat to Trump, so the SS has had to increase security measures.

I so wish that there were a way to prop bet on this with him...

Conservatism isn't a political ideology. It's a cultural identity.

Jesus....this is from wikipedia "Racism is discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. Today, the use of the term "racism" does not easily fall under a single definition".

Its sort of a tell when the borderline illiterate insist on SOOOPER STRICT definitions.

You don't have to look a hundred years into the future to see that this is a bad post. A few decades or a decade or even right now and you can see that education isn't a guarantee of a good career, that more people are working harder for less value and especially less security, and that humans are becoming commodities that move around to wherever employers need them. In a world with more and more material abundance it should easier for people meet their needs, have security and stay in their communities, not harder. The road your talking about isn't the road to utopia, it's the other direction.

It sucks to see that you and your wife have had it so hard and that you had to leave your families and communities behind in order to get by. I hope you at least have your student debt paid off.

The problem is most people don't have the gumption or talent to do what you and your wife did. People of your caliber are always going to be ok. It's the average or below average people that are the bulk of the problem.

That said - I agree the solution needs a lot more kick in the pants/reality check for these people, and a lot less "I will fix all your problems and bring back all the low-skill, high-paying jobs".

I like your opyimism but it's going to take something pretty major for the Rs to lose either the house or senate in 2018. And that's even before all the R state legislatures ram their voter suppression tactics through over the next 2 years. 2020 is most likely when it all changes. Assuming we still have free elections then.

At one point nearly 100% of people with this kind of gumption got good careers, the kind where parents could even raise a family on one income. That's been getting less and less true for a long time.

When only 65% of super gumption people can have good careers will they just say the 35% that can't need an extra kick in the pants?

Everyone knows we're headed towards problems because productivity keeps going up and incomes don't. Working people are in more and more competition with each other here and around the world. The answer can't always be: "Be smarter. Work harder." That's burying your head in the sand.

Either way - I'm a lot more worried about reasonable employment for the people in the below average to slightly above average range than the people with talent and gumption. If those people are in trouble, then average people are completely ****ed.

I honestly feel that liberals could manipulate trump into doing what they want by cooing in his ear and telling him he has the biggest hands.

That's exactly what Putin has done.

The U.S. should honestly just go to the single payer system. The job market would improve tremendously because you'd add back a ton of full time jobs that were eliminated because employers didn't want to have to give health insurance to full timers. You have to be careful though because if you do it like Canada it sucks. Other countries do it and works way better, Canadians are constantly coming here for surgeries and pregnancies though