Oh, yeah, I remember that playoff game very well. I was their with my uncle and cousin, and the weather was miserable ghastly horrible wet freezing cold. That was my junior year in high school, and L.A. was just like Seattle at its worst, not only that day, but most of that entire winter, too. I don't ever remember it raining so much over a sustained period of time like that in SoCal, even in the film Blade Runner.

(The upside to all that moisture was that the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains were always chock-full of snow, and the ski resort people up in Wrightwood, Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear were happy campers.)

The Rams, of course, were the true Mr. Octobers of the 1970s well before Reggie Jackson made it fashionable, peaking early every season to position themselves as Super Bowl contenders, only to bellyflop spectacularly each December, just like clockwork.

True to form, they slopped about in the Coliseum muck that day like hapless extras in a Three Stooges short, and couldn't do a damned thing in losing, 14-7, to what was a mediocre Vikings squad. By the second quarter, both teams were distinguishable only by their respective helmets.

You should hear Miami as they host this game. They are in turmoil. Dolphin fans hate Saban and Hurricane fans hate Notre Dame. They hope they both lose.

What a sad commentary on our government.
Someone joining an administration is expected to tow a certain line and resist speaking what they believe.

That is the opposite of the way I think things should be.

It seems really bizarre to me that someone credible, a nobel prize winner, would consider his influence to be diminished were he to be an important government official. I don't know what his influence is at this time with respect to influencing government policy, so I don't see how it could be diminished. But I certainly can understand why he would refuse to be part of a machine that stifles him. It is just so unfortunate that he feels that would be the case.

"Fiscal cliff" is, for most people, a catchy - scary - label they've been hearing about for months, and especially so in the last couple of weeks.  Night after night, I've watched the coverage, and every morning, I've read the newspaper, and in neither place have I found a detailed explanation for what's behind the term, an explanation about how we got to that point, or an explanation of what it meant.  I didn't read or hear about any possible solutions other than those being pushed by politicians with their own agendas.  Once or twice, I did see or read someone saying that the apocalypse would not be upon us if we "went over" the cliff, because Congress could just as easily undo what was kicking in and make them retroactive to January 1.

In my opinion, that factor is perhaps why the consensus here is different from these general public poll results: by and large, the people who comment here are not accepting as a given what they are being told via the media, but are going below the surface to educate themselves on the actual issues.  The more people know, I believe, the less likely they are to fall in line with the conventional partisan wisdom of Democrats thinking Obama's doing well, Republicans thinking he sucks.

Now, maybe the people in your non-TL life are just as informed as the majority of commenters here - I hope so - but in my experience of talking with non-TL people - including my own husband - when I started asking people to explain  what they understood the "fiscal cliff" to be all about, what it meant and so on, it became pretty clear that all most people could spit back were the talking points they'd been hearing (although I could tell whether they had been listening/watching/reading conservative outlets v. more progressive ones).  When I'd follow up with some version of "well, hey, I read that...and did you know that..." most people would just go kind of deer-in-the-headlights, sputter a bit and re-set at whatever talking point they'd left off with.

I guess I'm just not that convinced or confident that polls like the one you cited have as much meaning as you want them to have - and they certainly don't lead me to question the opinions I've formed or the conclusions I've reached.  It doesn't bother me to truly be outside whatever some poll defines the mainstream as, but I can't say that I appreciate polls being used to marginalize my opinions, when the polls themselves are so flawed.

I don't have any problem with you or anyone thinking Obama handled this well - all of our views depend on how we look at an issue, what we wanted out of any deal, what we believe is next on the horizon, and how we think all of it is going to affect us and the economy in general - so those opinions are going to vary.

There are two things that really frost my cupcakes: one is that regardless of what we want or need, and regardless of whether we support or reject whatever it is that's being decided in the WH and the halls of Congress, it's going to be what it's going to be, and neither you nor I matter in the long run - well, until someone wants our votes.  And, two, that polls like this get used by politicians to continue to advance positions and agendas that, if people really knew as much as they should, they would soundly reject.

Sorry for the dissertation.  Just seeing where Obama's nominating Jack Lew for Treasury - wow, guess things will really be changing there, huh?  Or maybe not.

Uncle Phil has influenced things at the University for years, even outside football.  Back in 2000, students were protesting child labor practices at Nike factories in Asia.  The university president at the time backed the students until Nike threatened to withold funds for the football stadium renovation.  Needless to say, the university changed their tune.

There are SO many examples of Uncle Phil's financial influence at Oregon, especially for football, but essentially all athletics.  We have 2 sons that went to (or are still attending) Oregon.  One son was a tutor in the recently built John E Jaqua Student Center for Athletes, funded by Uncle Phil.  In the upper floor women's bathrooms, when you walk out of the stall, you see a giant etch of none other than "Uncle Phil"....  creepy.  anyway, I can go on and on about Uncle Phil's monetary influence on Oregon athletics...  the whole thing makes me ill.

If ever in Eugene, please visit the campus to get a first-hand look at what money can buy, even in a small-ish Oregon town where it rains much of the year.  

The Oklahoma City Bombing was "carried out by intelligence agencies" with "Bill Clinton's involvement."

Juice boxes are part of a government effort to "encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don't have children."

The U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks.

The government has set up FEMA concentration camps in America.

The BP oil spill "could have been manufactured."

He also has theories about weather control, mass sterilization, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the EPA using drones to spy on midwestern ranchers.

It's more than about time that these firearm nutballs were finally confronted on these shows and told off in no uncertain terms. The only real shame is that it first took an Englishman to finally say publicly what so many others across the country are probably thinking privately to themselves.

If we're talking about the history of American pop culture, I'd agree that Presley was important -- but to American history as a whole? Uh, no. He perhaps merits a footnote as "'Elvis the Pelvis,' serial corrupter of our nation's youth" in discussions about American society in the 1950s, at best. That's it.