Ugh, I had the exact same reaction once. I had more or less stopped attending church, but went with my friend’s family one Sunday to not cause a scene. The pastor seriously said that God had blessed his family with basketball tickets that weekend.

The best explanation of the difference in racism I’ve ever heard is the old adage, “In the South, black people can get close, but not go high; in the North, they can go high but not get close.”

Oh wow, this is so incredibly timely. I just had this exact thing happened last night. Went to see a comedy show, and there was a meet and greet with the comedian afterwards. When it was finally my turn, I made some awkward comment that he did kind of a “huh?” to, and I walked away feeling like the world’s dweebiest…

Orrin Hatch, senate Pro Tem.

I actually had a moment like that after the election. My best friend (white, upper middle class, college educated) normally votes Republican but this election didn’t vote for President because “both options are so terrible.” A month or so after the election, we were talking about the debates and she’s said something…

Definitely smashed his legs in, a la Kathy Bates in Mercy, then headed off to drive people to the polls.

So all proposed rules (PR) and interim final rules (IFR) are posted in the Federal Register before becoming Final Rules (FR), which are then implemented through the respective agency. I get notification on all the HHS stuff because I work at an insurance company (I know), and my department gets EVERY. SINGLE. UPDATE.…

This is going to be incredibly important now that the Obamacare repeal has failed. A lot of the regulations that we take for granted in the ACA weren’t in the actual law, but went through the executive agencys’ rule-making process, because you just can’t fit everything into a 1000 page law.

I have a friend who used to work for a GOP senator and she said the same thing; said senator would not have lunch or ride in a car alone with any of his female staffers.

Absolutely. Closer to home, Vox just did an article semi-related to that, making that exact point about homogeneous society and then looking at the welfare state in America.

I’m having trouble finding the article I read, but a month or so ago, I read that towns in Germany that had Jewish pogroms during the Black Death ~1350) also had higher deportation rates, damaged synagogues, and anti-Semitic writings during WWII.

That is definitely not allowed.

But they did already cut into the profit margins of the insurance companies. The ACA gave us the medical loss ratio, which is a fancy way of saying the insurance companies have to spend at least 80% of every premium dollar on honest-to-goodness health care. So if you get charged $500 a month for premiums, $400 HAS to…

Hey, we actually would overlap! My trip isn’t 100% a sure thing yet, but if it happens I’ll be in Paris from about April 18-23.

Well, let me add the caveat that I only had $30,000 total when I graduated, and I started really buckling down on it when I had about $15-16,000 left. I just got so sick of paying the damn things and the numbers barely budging, so I finally just said screw it and socked money at it with every paycheck.

I can’t tell you what’s right for you, but I actually just finished paying off my student loans 5 years early because I’m still living at home. If I’d been living on my own, I would’nt’ve been able to do more than the minimum payment. But because I was at home, I was able to sock $1500 a month at them, and paid off…

If you’re going for more than a day or two, get the Museum Pass. It more than pays for itself, and it lets you skip ticket lines.

Is attempting to deliberately sabotage the ACA markets by chopping the advertising in the last week of open enrollment, which is when the “young invincibles” tend to sign up.

Our theory in SC is that she took it to polish up her resume to run for President in 2020/2024.

Just a quick thought for anyone who doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of watching the inauguration: please, PLEASE keep your TV on anyway to literally any other channel. If the TV isn’t on, it doesn’t get counted in the ratings and Marmalade Man gets a higher share of viewers. But if everyone’s TV is on a…