Welcome to today’s edition of Watercooler: Last Week, RedState.   This WC is all about Posts, Reader’s Diaries, and comments at RedState

Hot Topics Last Week:

On hero worship:

Joe Cunningham took us down a dark side street when he raised the issue of  #NeverTrump vs. Trump Derangement  by noting that:

There is this notion that there’s no difference between the #NeverTrump movement and the Trump Deranged. This is the discussion we need to have, because it’s as false as it is embarrassing.

Jim Jamison had this piece about The Lowering Of The ‘Presidential’ Bar And How Moral Relativism Became ‘Conservative’, both the diary and the comments are worth a read if you missed it or left the comments section early.

Health Care Reform (if words matter why are we still referring to the control of insurance companies and involuntary servitude of the many to fund the few as healthcare?):

Jim Jamitis wrote about the resurrection of, or the hope that, Obamacare might get fixed.  It might be called Obamacare Redux but he just noted that Obamacare Lives: Senate Republicans Want to Punish You For Not Buying Health Insurance. While over at the Washington Examiner, there is the predictable response from the establishment where they noted that the nonpartisan  CBO reports Senate GOP bill would leave 22 million more uninsured by 2026 (sorry for the non-RedState site reference.)

Why the methodology the CBO uses isn’t be challenged more vigorously just boggles my mind.  I suspect the GOPe would fall for the old trick question Are you still beating your spouse? and not realize that they will look like fools if they don’t reject the question out of hand. We really need some smarter political players at this level!

Then there was the inevitable argument from the crony capitalists where Sarah Lee noted that: The AMA Doesn’t Like McConnell’s New Bill, Which Might Mean It’s Good!

Supreme Court: Closeout rulings and Retirement Watch:  There were the usual SC end-of-term rulings and complaints against those, rulings.  These were fun to watch as they developed.  It was nice to see that the RedState community’s confidence in Gorsuch appears to be well founded with this piece by Streiff, Liberal Nightmares Come True as Gorsuch Begins to Cast SCOTUS Votes.

One of RedState’s resident lawyer contributors, smoosieq, asked the magical question: Does the SCOTUS’ Ruling in Trinity Lutheran “Profoundly Change” the Relationship Between Church and State?

She arrived at the highly technical answer, “Yep”!

Next up?  Supreme Court retirement watch!  Will Kennedy retire or not?  We know that the other two oldest Supremes will not willingly leave so, for the next few months all eyes will be focused on Kennedy.

Two important future cases will be heard in the 2017-2018 term.  One take  Supreme Court Agrees to Hear the Case of the Baker Forced Into Gay Serfdom and, although this is both a win in for the President now and possibly in the future, Streiff noted that the Supreme Court Hands President Trump a Victory in Travel Ban Case

Recurring Topics at RS:

The next month should be the final month for health insurance companies to either set new rates or withdraw from the state exchanges.  So, for the next six weeks I will be posting the link to the map of the current state of the coverage by county.

This map on the current state of the Obamacare exchanges, created by the federal government’s U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services map of Obamacare Exchange Carriers by County. To my eyes, this map hasn’t changed since last week.

Memorable RS One-Liners:

For all his celebrated business success, one would think the President could at least cobble together a couple of ideas about the value of free market healthcare, but all we get is rectally delivered blather that fails to mask his ignorance and apathy.  Jim Jamitis

Jamie McIntyre @ The Washington Examiner  showing once again why Jim Mattis is a bad a** there’s this:

Asked about his level of confidence that Assad has backed off [a chemical attack], Mattis said, “I’m not paid to have confidence in this sort of thing. I’m paid to be one of the sentinels that watches for it.“

RedState Gatekeeper:

A few members of the RedState community have again pointed out that the Posting Rules link does not work and, as I’ve asked before, how can new or existing members of our community know what the rules are here at RedState.  Starting with #1, I’m going to post one or more of the rules each week until the Posting Rules are restored.

POSTING RULES
We have an established community at RedState that we value greatly. At the same time, we keep registration, comments, and diaries open to the public. In order to support and promote our mission of educating, motivating, and activating conservatives, we have site rules. A person’s failure to comply with the rules can result in deactivation of their account.

RedState proprietors and our appointed moderators are the sole and final judges and enforcers of this policy. Users who are banned may contact the proprietors to appeal any moderator action or to lodge a complaint about moderator behavior.

The rules are as follows, and apply to both comments and diaries on the site:

1. Profanity and vulgarity are not allowed. Disturbing and/or pornographic images are forbidden.

2. Name-calling and personal attacks directed at other users is not allowed.

More …

RedState Tips:

I’ve posted Tips on dressing up your comments in previous Last Week, RedState WCs including:

• HTML markup for things like: Underlining <u>Your_text</u>, Bold <b> Your_text</b>, Italics <i>Your_text</i>, Block quotes <blockquote> Your_text</blockquote>.  As long as you have both the beginning and ending markups you can combine these in many ways like: <i><b>Your_text</b></i>
• Joliphant demonstrated how to get a table to work using the TEXT tab in WordPress’ interface.
• Inserting videos that start exactly where you want them to start.

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Drink up, that’s it for the Watercooler today. Remember, it’s an open thread all about RedState contributors from the front page, Reader’s Diaries, or in the comments section.

Thanks for stopping by, hanging out, and drink up.