Why are healthcare benefits being taken away from the sick, elderly and needy, in order to give significant tax reductions to those people who have so many assets they cannot even remember what they have?

Comment of the day, week and month, IMO.

Here's the quote I was thinking of in #89 (I misremembered it slightly):

(And if you think that Stein wouldn't have attacked Bernie Sanders with the same vigor if he were the nominee, then it's a safe bet you've never attended a Green Party meeting. Remember that the Greens ran candidates against Ralph Nader in both 2004 and '08.)

This was Bernie's response earlier this week when asked about Russian meddling:

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was "sick and tired" of talking about his former opponent Hillary Clinton's emails during the 2016 presidential election. For starters, the progressive candidate thought the supposed controversy was a total distraction from the issues American voters typically care about during campaign seasons: taxes, health care, national security.

But Sanders now says his resentment to the email developments went deeper, telling MSNBC Wednesday afternoon the Democratic Party was fully aware they were under cyberattack by the Russians.

Bernie and Jill Stein got a boost from the Russians during the primaries because Putin wanted to undermine Hillary:

"Through the end of 2015 and start of 2016, the Russian influence system began pushing themes and messages seeking to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. Russian's overt media outlets and covert trolls sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views towards the Kremlin. They were in full swing during both the Republican and Democratic primary season that may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed."

Bernie admitted this week that he knew that the email leaks were an attempt to divide the Democratic party:

"Did you know then that this might have been part of [the Kremlin's] design?" MSNBC reporter Ari Melber asked Sanders Wednesday. "To leak these emails precisely so that there would be more riffs in the Democratic Party?"

"Well of course we knew that," Sanders replied. "Of course we knew that they were trying to cause divisiveness within the Democratic Party," the senator continued. "That's no great secret."

Wednesday's statement from Sanders, the most popular politician in America, according to recent polls, indicates his campaign was made aware of Russian-backed efforts to meddle in and interfere with the 2016 election, even in the Democratic primaries between him and Clinton.

Here's why the GOP should care about Russia's meddling in our elections:

What about the second prong in the Russian campaign -- malicious cyber operations -- and when did those begin? Those operations ramped up during the primary season. An important line in the U.S. intelligence report reads, "Russian intelligence services collected [information] against the US primary campaigns ... they viewed as likely to shape future US policies." In October 2016, NBC reported that Russian efforts to steal emails and other data got underway in 2015 and included "top Republicans and staffers for Republican candidates for president."

I wish more attention was being paid to these early attempts at Russian meddling, which can not be dismissed as Democratic sour grapes. The idea that the Russians only hacked the DNC because it had poor cybersecurity is a lie. They hacked both sides but only released the stuff that got on Democrats. Maybe that's why so many in the GOP seem blasé about Russia's meddling--they're afraid if they speak up, the Russians will release the dirt they've collected on them.