LAAMike

I think the president would be remiss in his duties to not see if there was illegal activity by his predecessors, especially if it altered foreign diplomacy, by going straight to the source. But y'all can disagree. 

If you really want to embrace universal health care we are going to have to start accepting that this type of coverage is not going to include regular or timely access to a doctor. Doctors will be available to those who pay with cash or private insurance (which will mostly be put out of business) and those with the most urgent need (hopefully). The rest of us will be diagnosed by nurse practitioners or Watson perusing Web M.D.

That's just not true. In the wake of the VA scandal they have been trying to throw money at the problem with little to show for it. You can't just grow doctors on trees or convince the ones we do have that working for the government is a better idea than opening up their own private practice.

A second tweet, which remains active on Drake's account @thedrake30, says: "You can't do an impeachment inquiry from the basement of Capital Hill without even a vote! What is going on in this country?"
The republicans held impeachment inquiry in private with Clinton and then with the Benghazi hearings.  I don't get how they can be brainwashed so easily. He said a couple more equally stupid things on his twitter, but he just made his twitter private so I can't post them anymore lol.
I hope he gets fired.

moving to the Alternative Lifestyle Thread 

I am unsure of how the ISIS prisoners should be dealt with.  There is no ISIS nation for them to be returned to.  The European allies are not allowing any to be returned to their countries.  So the Kurds are just stuck with the responsibility and expense of jailing them? If there was any an operation that the UN should take over, it would seem to be dealing with the ISIS prisoners should be on their dance card.  

a sweater dress 
@mrwicked?

Her response was golden. I think the public nature of this squabble protects her somewhat. Hillary made a mistake, because it allowed Tulsi to speak openly about the true nature of Hillary, her cronies, and their endless war machine. As far as I'm concerned, Tulsi is a warrior in the truest sense of the word: courageous and fighting for peace.

I am genuinely happy for Howie.

One of my favorite Angels, ever. A lot of people - including me at times - were frustrated that he didn't put up a .350+ average like he did in the minors, but he gave the Angels several seasons between 3 and 6 WAR. I would have rather had one more season with him than the 5 we have seen from Heaney. 

I agree with this.  I am betting him getting the ax had nothing to do with the number of wins he was able to squeeze out of what was a team with serious deficiencies.  I am guessing this has everything to do with how he managed that clubhouse.  
It also doesn't bode well for Billy and his decision making process that a guy he hand picked has been bagged after one year.  That could be viewed as a pretty considerable misstep depending on the context and circumstances.  
If this truly is Arte and co. stepping in and overpowering the situation then that's not a good sign either.  
Hopefully this is exclusive to just Ausmus and his poor performance without any additional drama unfolding over the next few days/weeks/months.  

I think Ausmus is a scapegoat for 2019 and he never got a fair shot with the awful pitching staff he was given. If this means we get Maddon back though, I am totally for it. If we get another Ausmus type, it's a very odd move.

I worked hard and paid into those for 40 years. It's hardly "socialism". What Bernie and his ilk are talking about is free this-and-that for everyone, including illegal immigrants who haven't contributed a penny towards the goodies they've been promised. Big difference.

Considering that Hunter had zero experience in the oil and gas field, I think it's a certainty his daddy had everything to do with it. 
I keep hearing about Hunter pocketing 50 grand a month to sit on the board, but there are other reports that he took in $83,000 each month. And then there's the Chinese company that he got in with. The guy got rich without any real qualifications for either job.

The media will make sure trump wins. Even so, he probably wins handily. The dems ha e gone crazy. Don’t see how they can come close enough to the center after the primaries to get any middle-of-the-road voters to vote for them

It’s always a good idea to have a conversation but if it doesn’t quickly bear any fruit we need to GTFO. The war with Afghanistan has been ridiculous. 

Just get out (I know it isn’t simple) but no more negotiating. Just leave.
The reason being is the Taliban won’t do a cease fire during these negotiations. Just the other day, two more U.S. serviceman died after being killed by an Afghan soldier, who of course infiltrated the Afghan security forces. 
https://www.ksl.com/article/46607424/pentagon-identifies-2-us-soldiers-killed-in-afghanistan
They don’t recognize the Afghan government and so it just seems there is is no point then.
Eighteen years and we did the best we could but it’s time to give it up.

So Adam could be a senator? Sweet deal!

To put Tucker in context, Fangraphs has him as a 55 FV prospect. Adell is 65 FV, Marsh 50 FV. So he's closer to Marsh, but still better. He's basically Marsh a year from now if Marsh has a great first half.
That's exactly why the Angels shouldn't trade Marsh. Right now he won't get them a Stroman or Ray, but next year he might. Right now the Angels are more than just a Stroman or Ray from winning the wildcard, but next year they should be better and closer to locking a wildcard spot up.
I'm not opposed to making a trade, but don't do it out of desperation, especially considering there are a few #1-2 pitchers on the free agent market this offseason, and a bunch of #3-4s. 

So with my dad's passing I had to get creative with my mom's healthcare solution since she was covered by his plan through his work (which wasn't all that good to begin with, but i digress).
She doesn't qualify for medicare because she's 61, not 65. The social security survivor benefit of around 2k a month is too much to qualify for medi-cal. Because my dad made too much money from this year she doesn't qualify for tax credits through covered california.So that leaves us with $800 premiums (which would suck up nearly half her income) through covered california for dogshit coverage, federal COBRA which is not gonna be any different really from covered CA, or the private insurance market. She doesn't qualify for disability, but is not currently working due to emotional distress and a host of other issues. A whole bunch of shit choices if you ask me.
So I did some research into something I heard a little about some years ago called direct primary care (there's a handful of doctors offices in the OC that practice this model). In a nutshell, it's like a membership to a family physician that totally ignores health insurance. $90 per month gets you access to old school, primary care with your doctor. No co-pays, unlimited office visits, prescription medicine at retail value (something like prednisone is like 16 cents a pill), next to instant service as same day or next day appointments are often available, wellness checks, etc. It's pretty interesting and I got pretty deeply involved in the research of it. Looking at doctor's message board to see what they think, reading articles on it, trying to understand every angle. Doctors are able to maintain the same pay or close to it with significant lower overhead due to not having to worry about all the crap that comes with insurance, not to mention a significantly better lifestyle, when me and my mom went to do a meet and greet with the doctor to learn more from her she sat and chatted with us for close to an hour. Totally unheard of at an office like Kaiser where they rush you out in 5 or 10 minutes so they can move on to the next person in line.
The only other thing that needed addressed was what happens in an emergency when you need to be admitted to a hospital due to a catastrophe. Your membership at the doctor you go to obviously has nothing to do with that. So then there are a couple of choices, a high deductible insurance plan or something like a healthshare ministry like libertyhealthshare.org. We went with the healthshare option, and I am hopeful it isn't a disaster for her. Did significant research into that as well, basically $299 a month with the plan she got results in a $1,000 responsibility for the year any medical 'incident', once you have paid $1,000 that year, any medical bill is covered up to a million dollars per bill. There are some restrictions since they're a non-profit Christian organization, like they won't cover the cost of certain things like lung cancer due to smoking, childbirth that resulted from a pregnancy out of wedlock, etc. They have a whole list of things they tell you ahead of time. People who've used them say it works amazingly, so...
All in all, a little under $400 a month seemed like it has all the bases covered for someone in a highly vulnerable situation. We'll see how this goes...

I  bothered to look it up and $2000 for tuition in 1962 (when I started college - yes I am older that dirt) is equal to $16,960 in today's dollars and I am sure that room and board and books, etc. have gone up in a similar manner.  I understand that the cost of college has outpaced inflation but I think that guaranteed student loans have had a large hand in that.  I do agree that there are too many attending college today and this glut of college graduates has made a college degree the new norm for getting a job that could have been met with a high school diploma back then.  

$2,000 per year 45 years ago when you adjust for inflation is still a pretty big number.  

Politically, it's brilliant for Trump to be focusing so much on "The Squad".  The media loves them so making them the face of the party is not really all that difficult of a challenge. Tlaib is proving just how ignorant they are with this nonsense.  

Here is the thing about free public school for all.  I'll put UCLA as an example.  Right now, 44k go to UCLA.  If you made UCLA free, would that number increase, decrease or stay the same.  I would say it would stay the same, because you already have a fixed number of structures, and faculty.  You could increase structures and faculty, but that would cost more money, and if tuition is free, where is that money coming from?  
Then I'll add USC into the mix.  About 44k students go there also.  But it's a private school, so no such freebie.  So how does this affect free public school for all?  If you make UCLA free, then those that don't have rich parents and go to USC racking up tuition will then go to UCLA.  Thus where you have 44k going to UCLA, now 15k get shut out because all the smart students will realize, that free is better than bills.  It won't hurt USC at all, because it'll then be easier for Loughlin and Huffmans kids to attend.  
In the end, free public school for all is the same pipe dream as free healthcare for all is.  In theory, it's great.  But you don't have enough schools or hospitals already.  So making it free will only make a nightmare situation even worse.  Unless you really think it's easy and cheap to just pop up university structures and hospitals in todays climate.

Obviously this question does not lend itself to "one size fits all" solutions.  There are too many variables - are you at home, at work, at Angel Stadium, where a community pool isn't convenient or in an immigrant detention facility where the toilets might have to multitask.  If you are at home, you cannot go wrong with my routine - I wipe firmly three times and then I use my wife's Water Pik.  Works every time.