Anything connected in any way to the words "national standards" cannot be conservative.

I've never married, but I think it would have been a bad idea to have married in my early 20s. I needed to grow more in many ways, too many family members needed me, and I probably would have married the wrong person. I would also have missed too much that I could do alone. I don't mind being single at weddings or events given the freedom. On the other hand, I am male, which as people have noted gives me a longer time scale.

What always annoys me is how the analysis is framed: being single makes someone liberal, being married makes him/her conservative. But what if the answer is really the opposite? What if the more liberal people by nature tend to gravitate towards singledom, and the more conservative people tend to marry? I suspect this is the heart of what is actually going on. Is there concrete evidence that marrying seems to change voting behavior (ie imagine you could have controlled experiment)? If not, then trying to reach single women through messaging may not be effective.

Pyrrhic victory? What was lost in the last 5 years besides piling up debt? A lot. We're fortunate it is going down, but we're like a boxer who barely won on points and now has a broken nose and two black eyes to show for it.  Still, these are green shoots.

1877-1929 was the golden age. Yes this is despite Jim Crow, plagues, and Prohibition. But there seems to have been much less crime per capita in much of this period (homicide rate 1/4-1/5th of today's!), expanding freedoms, progressive reforms that really did help people more or less, an economy that kept growing over the long haul despite some serious dips, amazing technological progress, the creation of new, diverse, forward looking urban centers while retaining a large degree of small town Americana in the rest of the country.

I was told by people alive before WWII that things were very different. The national spirit was apparently far different. I am told people were much more hopeful and community oriented. WWII changed everything.

50s were no golden age. One of the worst periods in US history.

Though I think times are going to be tough for a while, I have an odd feeling that a new golden age is ahead at some point in this century.

The sad facts are: 1. The US economy has been really crummy since the late 90s and really has gone sideways. 2. The European and Japanese economies have been even crummier than the US in the same period really going down.

In a normal economic environment, gold makes no sense. Why invest in a piece of metal, when you could invest in a company that is doing stuff or in the bonds of country that is growing by leaps and bounds? Gold is only attractive when the economy is bad (hence its performance in the 80 and 90s). Gold strangely gets hammered in crises, such as in 2008. It could be "overbought" as people note.

The big problems as I see it are that the developed countries are A. really old and graying and B. not investing capital in growth. We've wasted lots of money on things that never had any economic benefits (eg trendy college courses). I really wonder whether the US will return to healthy growth or whether we will continue to tread water. I also wonder if Japan and Europe will get dramatically poorer.

FYI: I own some gold and mining stocks/etfs. 

Throwing out runners isn't unimportant. Having a Pudge Rodriguez does help to win games. But again, I would rather have a catcher who knows pitching, and then I would like a catcher who could hit. Throwing out runners is third.

The problem for the Pirates has been money above all. Very small market teams have had a hard time staying competitive: Oakland, Miami, KC, Minnesota, Cleveland, Colorado, and the Bucs have real issues here.  If AJ Burnett is huge addition, there is a huge problem.

1. Catching is the worst position in that is chews apart players. Make a guy an outfielder, and he could play to age 40-42 at a high level. Make a guy a catcher, and usually he is done by age 30-32. Since good lefty bats are rarer than righty bats, you are better able to expend righties.

2. The most important part of catching in MLB has got to be how a catcher handles pitching. Remember the catcher calls the game, not the pitcher. Other skills, such as throw to second and hitting are less important. That's why catchers bat 8th or 9th with .240 averages. A good catcher gets maybe 40% of base stealers, a bad one about 20%. In the grand scheme, that is not that big a deal in MLB compared to calling a good game.

3. Baseball is wonderful in that practices tend to reflect efficiencies. If there aren't many lefty catchers, there is some perceived advantage by managers AND that the sabermatricians have probably looked at this already.

I suppose you could have licensed purveyors of official records. In theory, the law could let each village or city set its own rates and have competition among municipalities for weddings. I was much more incensed at fees when it cost $300 in permits to build a small shed in my yard, and had to show up between the hours of 8-9 AM on one of two days of the week to file for the permit. More outrageous are the fees and taxes associated in many states with starting and maintaining a business entity. This is also hundreds of dollars per year. But I digress.....

If it is not physically in your possession- it can be expropriated. Hard to physically possess intellectual property.

24 hour waiting period is a good idea. Ever heard of Britney Spears' first marriage? This sort of measure prevents someone from doing something spur of the moment, potentially under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Yes, there could be an annulment action later, but that makes things more complicated.

$40 fee is justified. There are civil benefits to marriage of numerous kinds. The clerk's office has to keep it on file. Someone has to pay the clerk. That's a simple libertarian user fee.

The ceremony aspect is very important in that the crime of bigamy revolves around it. Check out the NY penal code for the laws revolving around that.

True. But the heart of the argument is why Bush turned this gentleman into a Progressive. I am merely showing how much worse the progressive alternatives were.

And in 2001, I really think Bush did an excellent job.

Say what you will about George W. Bush. I don't agree with everything the man did, but I am sure grateful he was president in 2001 and not Al Gore. Imagine what that would have been like.

What if John Kerry had been president in 2005? Would we have had the surge? I think we won the Iraq war, though a terrible slog. I really believe we would have lost in Iraq if Kerry had won in 2004. Imagine what a world that would be.

What would a President Kerry have done in 2008 during the financial crisis? And yes there would have been a crisis regardless, because of the Fed. That real estate market in the mid 2000s was unreal and driven by cheap money from the Fed and abroad. Would the banking system have collapsed in October 2008?

A lot of Brits I know liked to trash Bush in conversation, but I would always add, "He's better than the alternatives we had, and you know it!" They'd grudgingly nod their heads and drink their pints silently.

First, got to love Ricochet. I like how people will stick up for their values.

Second, regarding youth. There is a big difference between 20 year olds and say 28 year olds. The latter, like myself, has spent their formative years in a very difficult world-- 9/11 then the Iraq war, then a major economic collapse while entering the job market. Those who are 20 are usually too young to really have been impacted by two downright terrifying periods. I can't tell you how scared I was personally in 2001-2003 and in the fall of 2008. And those of you who are older remember the edge people seemed to have in October 2001 and October 2008. It was palpable. The divide between people who went through these periods in their formative years and those who didn't will be great in the future.

The great flaw in Thompson's logic is as follows. He blames wealth inequality on globalization. However, aren't even most of the poorest people far wealthier and better off then most people around the world? in countless countries the average income is way below the average in the US. Why should people who are poorer in the US be redistributed money so as to be on par with other Americans but leaving all the other inhabitants of this world bereft? Because by turning back globalization, by putting all these controls on the free market economy, the real transfer of wealth and income is from the destitute of foreign countries to the "poorer" people of the US. That sounds inhuman and draconian based on his own ethics and logical standards. But isn't that the question he doesn't answer?

Her name is Margaret Thatcher, and she was one of the greatest, smartest, and best conservative politicians of all time. Perhaps we can study her life more to find out some of these answers.

A side note: I love it when liberals say we need more women in government. I say that I agree fully and note how excellent Thatcher was in as Prime Minister. The liberals then shudder and self destruct. Try it. It really works!