Free Republic

At what age do children wonder whether Santa really exists? President Donald Trump would like to know. In a Christmas Eve call, Trump asked a 7-year-old named Coleman whether the child still believes in Santa Claus. "Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at 7, it's marginal, right?" Trump asked Coleman.

To conservatives like me, the following proposal for raising taxes on Hollywood celebrities goes against my DNA. However, two facts are indisputable: (1) Hollywood is perhaps Obama's biggest booster club, giving him donations in kind and in dollars, and (2) Congress' stated goal is to raise taxes on the wealthy, although they will actually raise them on everyone. Therefore, with a bit of irony in mind, I propose the following for debate. After listening to Democrats argue that the wealthy aren’t paying their fair share of taxes, it’s time for Americans to take an empirical view of the massive wealth...

As per Drudge - no link to story

Over at The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn attacks the Medicare portion of Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap”. The Wisconsin Republican would give seniors a voucher under Medicare in the expectation that they would shop around for the best insurance and health care. But Cohn doubts seniors are up to the task: That all sounds perfectly innocuous: Who wouldn’t want seniors taking the initiative and hunting around for the best bargains? But it’s not clear how many seniors really have the ability to navigate the world of health care with the sort of sophistication to really hunt down the most cost-effective care,...

YUBA CITY, Calif. (AP) - It's been almost two years since Kimberly Ward moved from North Carolina to California with her husband, yet finding a job that pays well enough to keep pace with the state's high cost of living continues to be a struggle. She's had several jobs that paid $9 an hour - well above the state's minimum wage of $6.75 an hour - but each was temporary. The sales jobs she has been seeking at a local mall in this suburb north of Sacramento aren't likely to pay much more than the minimum. "They should raise the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A day after hundreds of protesters objected to closing the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the county released findings that treatment at the center is "poor to marginal." The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, which runs King/Drew, released a one-page executive summary Tuesday that described the findings by two trauma experts. A full report is due in about two weeks. The timing of the findings was questioned by some supporters of the trauma center, which serves a poor stretch of South Los Angeles and serves victims of gunshot wounds, stabbings...