The US and UK, that is ...

Oh, England and Wales. Sheesh.

Two countries separated by a language.

I don't need three initials and hyphens in my name either.

I don't think I've seen anyone as entrenched as MadBomber in the notion that everyone, if they just wanted to, could lead a middle-class, if not upper-middle-class life, uninterrupted by any institutional factors.

Maybe Boaz.

Private, nonemployer-provided insurance has sucked for me since 1994, regardless of White House occupant. If it wasn't the coverage, it was the premiums . . . and sometimes both.

The only break I got for about two years was when my wife was working 26 hours a week for a nonprofit, and they were gracious enough to put her on it, which didn't mean much, since she was healthy and past childbearing age. Then they put me on it, which was well beyond gracious.

Then my wife and said employer came to a parting of the ways, so to speak, and it was COBRA for 18 months, which only mostly sucked.

Then the marketplace since about 2017 (Anthem), which in the first few years was $2k monthly premiums for both of us. She went on Medicare five years ago, and I'm in a few months. I'm already setting up appointments.

Yes, health insurance policies (and yes, MB, the plain-fact necessity of signing on the ones available to you) and the CEOs sustaining them have robbed a whole lot of people more years of life than seeing one CEO die early by whatever means. How much of their profits and salaries could have gone toward helping people with their health, while they remained profitable and rich?

I fear that according to MB, one always has the choice/freedom to seek alternatives to corporate-provided health insurance.

Tangential real estate interlude.

17. STD echoing Richard Hooker, if you want to go back to the original. You can look it up.

Ok, back from getting a few cavities filled by Dr. al-Jaharishi, or something.

While I didn't wake up this morning thinking I'd like to see anybody shot dead in the street, I can't say I shed a tear for a private healthcare CEO. And I worked in and around the insurance industry for 20 years. Also suffered through a few years of Obamacare marketplace premiums that just about killed me. They've settled down now. Medicare comes March 1. As a self-employed person for 30 years, I've paid more into Medicare over a lifetime than saps with a day job.

But 40 minutes of Dr. J rooting around in my upper right quadrant gave me time to think.

No musical figures or anyone in entertainment.

No leaders, foreign or domestic.

No one in sports, no one in my personal life.

As the Novocaine or Lidocaine was wearing off, it hit me.

Nick Fuentes.

I heard on the radio this was his first trip to Africa. That's far worse, if true.

10. I'm heading to the dentist. I'll think about it.

Certainly there are some positions coming open on the Whitey House kitchen staff.

Murder of a health insurance CEO is justifiable homicide. Mofos.

America reaping a bit of what it has sown.

You liberals are stupid.

I keep seeing this, you ultra leftists seem to think "Karma" is going to do something just because Trump won. --Boaz

Boaz, do you think everything is about Trump? Did you learn any history in high school, because there's rarely any evidence of it here. Doesn't sound like military service taught you much either, except as a jobs program.

A post for Gracie from white folk America.

Ad hominem attacks are a long respected tradition on the DR.

#11 | Posted by shane

I remember coming back here and mentioned that I wasn't here to get into mindless arguments with people, and I think it was JPW who said that I was violating the terms of agreement.

What is your rationale for this?

#37 | Posted by BellRinger

You playing Lamplighter now? It's pretty obvious. Stick with your own shtick, sick as it can be.

The "assassination" was a made-for-TV event. Might as well put up a statue of Fonzie jumping the shark.

I had left Georgia by the time they were represented by hacks like Chambliss and Isakson. I remember back in the early 80s when Isakson was a liberal Republican, certainly to the left of stalwarts at the time like Herman Talmadge (D-racist).

I'd take Warnock over just about anyone, and I'm perfectly happy to be living with Kaine and Warner. Have met them both. I told Warner he was a grave disappointment to me as a constituent, because for 10 years I was squatting on a Warner for POTUS URL and he never came through for me. He laughed heartily.

And saw Kaine mostly at music festivals.

10. From Alabama. I'd take Georgia's senators over any in the South, along with Virginia's.

Having spent my entire adult life in the South . . .

12. The pope?

I can't imagine Melania allowing her boyspawn close enough to his father to have a conversation of any substance with him, even this one.

Free jazz Friday

A Collective Improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet

"--the former Trump impeachment witness accused the tech billionaire and close Trump ally of being unwittingly used by Russia."

I guess the problem is that most of the GOP and MAGA seem wittingly used by Russia, but don't care.

If the land is going for Trumpism, why not move to a state where you can get your multiple freaks on among the like-minded?

And Idaho is too spread apart for concentrated nonsense like the Villages.

Spoke with our son in Detroit. He and his wife just came back from the Thanksgiving day parade and will be watching the Lions game in a bar.

Standing room only admission for $100.

There probably weren't many bottles of water then ...

And stores didn't have an aisle full of personal water bottles to fulfill your color desires and a five-year-old girl's cultural fantasies.

Times change. Newspapers used to cost a tenth of what they do now. And the quality was immeasurably better.