Hurlshort

Yes, but look how quickly the Republican party already changed their tune on immigration. They recognize that they are losing too many minority and women voters, and the white male vote won't carry them anymore. All of us border states hinge heavily on the immigration issue, and if the Republican party can find the right tact, they will be right back in the mix with CA.

I wouldn't worry too much about Texas suddenly turning blue, I think what you will see if either the Republican party will adapt or it will die, and another party will step in to take its place. It has happened plenty of times before.

Car alarm's are teh bad. Really I don't trust and third party electronics in a car, the electrical system probably wasn't designed with it in mind.

I don't see it happening. You just don't have the state militias or the organization that you did back then, and the people clamoring for secession are a largely uneducated group. In 1860 you had career politicians and military men backing the south. I'll get concerned when you have a couple classes from VMI or Annapolis protesting, instead of Ole Miss. Plus as much as a state may whine and protest over health care reform, it is hardly an issue that warrants becoming a separate nation.

That's pretty odd. How are you recharging the battery? That can happen with my RV if I go too long without running it, but usually I recharge it and drive for a bit, and it runs fine again.

I think it depends on the car make and how old it is. I'm pretty uncomfortable changing the battery on my newer cars, especially when I had a Honda Accord awhile back. My Jeep Grand Cherokee is pretty easy to get too, but my wife's Ford Flex doesn't look easy. My RV has the easiest ones to get too, thankfully. But hey, $50 extra to have a professional do it right and save you time might be worth it. It really depends on comfort level.

I guess I should have added 'most ridiculous today' because we do seem to be getting a lot of people lately who are angry about games they've sunk huge amount of time into.

Interesting stuff on Twilight. Given how difficult it can be to keep young people electively reading, I'm never one to hate on a book that generates excitement.

This may be the most ridiculous thing I have read on these forums.

I apologize if you feel I am misunderstanding you, it is not intentional. I also think there are less liberals here than you realize. Krezack is the only true liberal, and he's way over on that. Most of the folks here are closer to moderates.

We could blame the consoles. But really Skyrim did some pretty amazing things, and Fallout 3 was also pretty fantastic, so I just call Oblivion an anomaly.

Yeah, if you believe government creates wealth then you would see it that way. You can take several things from it depending on your view. It doesn't remove the fact that more democratic states are higher towards the top in debt despite having more average gdp. Government answer to that is tax more. I don't think you really understand how a debt to income ratios work. That GDP is the most important thing, even with all the debt issues that a state like California has, it still generates a brickload of wealth and is in nowhere near the hot water of a country like Greece. Texas is probably the only red state that could actually afford to be independent.

Democrat states would be up to their necks in debt like they are now. Although this is 2 years old, graphs like this are cool to look at. http://www.ritholtz....-their-debt.png 14 of the top 20 are straight up Democratic states. Huh, that makes the democratic states look great, actually.

I was very nervous about voting for Jerry Brown, but the crazy thing is all he has done since getting into office is cut programs and lower spending. He's been a total fiscal conservative. So when he put together a reasonable tax program that would allow California to bring its education funding back from the depths of the ocean, it seemed like the right thing to do. Anyone who complains about Brown as a free spending liberal is uninformed. Schwarzenegger was killing me on taxes by the way, every year my state taxes went up when he was governor, and they've dropped back under Brown.

What amazes me about these people is they can talk about patriotism and secession in the same breath and not see the hypocrisy.

I went to an NFL game today and it ended in a tie. Weird. I'm glad to hear you are enjoying the community Bruce, it really is a charming bunch of miscreants.

Wreck It Ralph - I probably enjoyed it more than my daughter, it was a fantastic movie. Watching the lead characters beat up on a car bonus stage with Ryu at the end credits was a great way to end it too

Pedialyte or any children's electrolyte juice works best. It contains less of the sugar of a gatorade.

That's actually pretty good news.

The sci-fi overlay really bothered me originally when I played AC1, because I really just wanted a game set in the Crusader States without any other rubbish. But I came to terms with it and find the gameplay to be very fun.

Much like fixing a laptop, just because it is possible and there are youtube videos showing you how to do it, doesn't mean everyone should pick up a soldering gun. A desktop PC is much easier to open up and swap components than anything else.

I know you are talking more about the fact that other games have crappy stories, but I find the key to my AC enjoyment is to ignore the overarching theme and enjoy the personal story of Ezio.

Fixing the broken medical and insurance industry might help a bit, too.

AC1 was a beautiful game in a great setting that let me explore a fascinating time in history. That being said, it grew repetitive after a number of hours and I never finished it. Because of this, I held off on buying AC2 until recently. AC2 is still a beautiful game in a great setting that lets me explore a fascinating time in history, but it has removed the repetition. That's good.

I'm guessing, and really hoping, that the Republican party will be making some big changes to become more relevant in the next election. A good first step would be to jettison some of the crazier elements. They've already run two cadidates who are much more moderate than the party itself in 2 consecutive elections, how much more can they concede? If Romney had actually stuck to the policies he pushed as governor, he might have had a shot at some swing voters and moderates. As is, he never really established a strong identity.