The Hall of Fire

Something good is finally coming out of North Carolina, which is an incredible relief after the relentless stream of horribleness my state has been spewing out for the past two years. A group of clergy have gotten together and filed a lawsuit against the state's gay marriage ban based on the claim t...

People will believe what they want to believe. It is just that simple. If they want to believe the president is a Muslim or a communist or that he hates America and wants it destroyed, they will believe that. If they want to believe the Democrats want the government to have complete control over eve...

... should this be called "The Hobbit"? Discuss. No. At the very least it should be called "Peter Jackson's Hobbit", or more accurately "Peter Jackson's Lord Of the Rings, Episodes I, II & II", after which they could remarket the LOTR films as "PJ's LOTR Episo...

That was very considerate of you ;) . I actually surprised myself and went to see tonight with some other friends though. In fact I just got back a few minutes ago. I can proudly say that I do not completely fall asleep once, although I did start to doze off a few times, but there was always some lo...

WampusCat wrote:I saw the midnight show and absolutely loved it. Tauriel was terrific, Tharanduil was perfect, Bilbo was excellent and Smaug was ... Scary, menacing, vain, evil ... Everything I hoped he would be.

And nobody snoring next to you too!

I also read somewhere that the exchange in South Carolina, of all places, has as one of its providers a truly non-profit insurance company and that it is expected to work so well that it will, effectively, put the for-profit companies out of business since they will not be able to compete with the r...

But surely the parent is also paying for the child to be on their policy until 26, so if the child can get insured through their own workplace instead of their parent, wouldn't that be preferable? For the parent, at least? It looks to me like that is acceptable. Or am I missing something?

My fear is that if these benchmarks, as random and irrelevant as they may actually be, are not met by the predetermined dates then Senate Democrats up for election in '14 will panic and begin jumping ship, giving Republicans the chance to repeal or at the very least eviscerate the law beyond recogni...

The botched roll-out does have the potential to be a serious issue. From what I have read they need to have 7 million signed up through the exchanges by March 31st. If that doesn't happen the insurance companies will start jacking up prices to cover the extra mandated coverage and those who do have ...

Bachman has already announced she is not seeking reelection to congress again. Maybe that's why she felt she could say whatever crazy thing she wanted to ... oh wait, she has always done that anyway. Never mind.

Exactly. I don't expect the GOP to go away, but I do expect the current brand of extremism to go away, eventually. Hopefully.

Edit. To clarify, I don't expect the extremism to go away either, but I do expect it to be marginalized.

It will matter that demographic changes do not favor the republicans once the demographic changes reach the point that they can no longer stay in office. The gerrymandering is part of their last gasp. I don't think they can keep cheating their way into office forever. And I certainly do not accept w...

It does seem kind of humorous that that what the GOP is getting is something the President wants, not to mention ending the sequester (if that really is what they are saying - I haven't caught the latest news cycle). Sounds like a win-win to me. As for the long term consequences, I agree that this i...

I don't think any official numbers have been released for states whose exchanges are being run by the Federal government. There have been many glitches with the system so far, apparently. I have tried several times myself to set up an account and keep getting an error message.

I do believe that there is a faction within the tea party movement that believes the country is so broken* that the only way to "save it" is to destroy it, and those individuals may actually welcome the economic calamity that would come with default. * this would be the Michele Bachman / T...

The consequence of that acquired cynicism is desertion of the field of battle and lack of involvement, which means that the only ones left are those who enjoy the dirty play and foster the cynicism...and then we all have to live with it. I have to agree with Cerin though that there is something els...

It's very difficult for someone like me, especially given what has happened in my state (North Carolina) to not get drawn into the escalating hyperbole surrounding all of this. I'll admit, treason is one of the nicer sentiments I hold toward the Republican Party these days. The rest cannot be said h...

My beliefs about an afterlife are fairly ambiguous, somewhat along the lines of what Anthy and Lali said - namely that if there is such a thing it is likely to be beyond my ability to comprehend at this point in my existence. I guess like others I tend to want to believe that if there is such a thin...

Nel, that was just me being flippant again - I really did not mean for the word score to be interpreted as "political points". I have already said that I agree with Stewart that I doesn't matter who did it as long as somebody did it. That said I agree with your assessment, although I have ...

Ah, ok then. I really wasn't aware of any such talks between Obama & Putin, at least as far as averting a US strike by giving up the chemical weapons. Must have missed that news cycle. But it does make one wonder about Kerry's role in all of this. In the end I still take Jon Stewart's side in al...