Well, it's certainly good that a RINO like Romney didn't win the last election.  The worse the better and all that.  It's good that an Alinskyite Socialist won a second term as president.  Now we can engage in full-time fantasy.

As long as we're imagining in these fantasies, how about we have it painted by Frank Franzetta.  I picture Sarah Palin in a steel bikini riding a winged dragon, holding aloft a sword that cleaves a monstrous Audit Monster in two. 

In that sense, this is just the ultimate wedge issue.  I think we enough to know that the theory that gender is arbitrary is utter 60s/70s rubbish.  People tend to identify with a gender very strongly, almost always (but not always) the one they are, genetically.

In the extremely rare case of someone with pairs of genitalia, it's a real question.  I think I'd obviously be upset if I thought my whole life I were a butch girl but it turned out I was just a castrated man.  

I would say do not castrate children as rule with exceptions in the most extreme and obvious cases.

If the issue is about gender-reassignment surgery, I'm against it in all cases.

And remember I'm the Libertarian atheist who has no qualms at all about homosexuality being a perfectly acceptable thing.  If I knew anyone contemplating this I would plead with them not to go under the knife.

I think almost universally people who have surgery on their genitalia merely because they identify strongly with another gender are not doing themselves a favor.  You never really "become" physically the opposite gender, as we can only approximate the tackle, not make it function.  You don't get to experience sexual fulfillment, as I (am told) that you don't orgasm the same way.  It's a huge ordeal for a minor cosmetic detail.

My brother, who is a cop, speculated on the stress of his job is partly due to the fact that half or more of all calls are to deal with "domestic" situations.  Even the dimmest people respond to the perverse incentives of the system, and wives will simply lie about about their husband hitting them just to get him out of the house that night.  And then there the horrible male abusers they deal with who terrorize their wives (or usually just live-ins) and their children, who themselves have figured out the perverse incentive and will lie about their wives hitting them, and get the system working against their victimes as well.

He had the charming story the other month of a man beating his wife so hard while they were driving that they drove off a mountain.  When he and the rescue crew pulled them out (they were only hurt slightly) they were both in near blackout-drunk states, flailing and fighting.  Their kids were in the backseat.

There is a question here about Liberty and limited government.  You want government out of your personal life?  Because it's rooting around there well hard.

I should clarify that my post is not to speculate on "getting rid" of the public teat.  We live in a welfare state with a large military industrial complex.  I would like it all to be other than it is, but for now that's what we have.  Discussions on dismantling this can be held at a later date when there is sufficient support for even considering it.

I want people who depend on government programs to feel motivation and inspiration to move beyond it.  I accuse the Left-wing overlords who run the Democrat party of condescending to poor and uneducated people, indulging their misanthropy while not giving them anything that really helps them.

This is what's called a 'gimme.'

I listen to NPR, too.  Sometimes I nod.  Sometimes I punch a hole in drywall.

And arm pilots.

I don't support repealing laws against illegal drugs.

What I support is telling cops that they don't have an obligation to report victimless crimes.  If people are smoking pot but nobody is complaining, then don't bust anyone.

I want the cops to be able to bust up teenagers smoking pot or openly dealing on a street.  Same with people shooting up in an alley.  If people complain, then bust them.

That's the most obvious solution to me.

Well, yes it does.  There are lots of misanthropes on the right.  But if they're not starting out with the premise that Big Government is the solution, then they are not as ultimately doomed to despair as the Lefties who are waiting for the right philosopher king to come along and save them.

You are very correct, Sweet-and-Low.  To young people coming up "the man" is the current Liberal elite.  The kids who have spent the past few years rolling their eyes at lectures about "bullying" will rebel as they always do.

There is something enigmatic about being out of power.  We are the ones now that get to wear black turtlenecks and meet on golf courses after dark to converse around a brass Reagan bust.

I never do tire of finding out all the strange things people believe.  The thing about "low information" voters is that people who the most powerless, (such as by being poor or having chaos in their personal lives), are the quickest to believe in esoteric conspiracies.

Having been poor and having been a fly on the wall with rich people both, the thing that reverberates is no one really has belief that government is going to work all that well.

Obama has his cult of personality but people on the Left are not developing a stronger sense of confidence in the competence of government.  In fact, so much of their world view is tied up in misanthropy, that I think that many on the left derive pleasure being out of power and assuming the Powers-That-Be align against them. 

Stan, maybe I'm a foolish, Dondi-eyed naif, but I still think Democracy is a good compromise of how to have a government.  Of course expansive government becomes self-justifying and self-aggrandizing, but the remedy lies in a populace that will vote in its self interest.  If it's made clear that the same self-interest lies in not expecting government services for everything.

I cannot possibly make a better argument than walking into an airport and pointing at the TSA and say "that!  Is that working for you?"

It's a very good question.  I forget the name of my mayor, and I couldn't tell you the name of my Illinois legislature rep or Illinois state senator if you waterboarded me until the end of the session.

Cui bono?, indeed.

But Kim Kardashian did something.  I know that's in the news.

I think America's particular attitude toward religion, (free market?) is a particular adaptation from Protestantism.  I say that a background from many different creeds and mainly Catholic.

I think utopian thinking should be understood as a harbinger of totalitarianism.  It's present in cults and the worst excesses of mainline religion.  It's where atheists get dangerous in trying to substitute a God-centric world view with a "rational" one that excuses tyranny in the name of perfecting the crooked timber of humanity.  No omlettes for me, thank you.

Midge, don't get me wrong.  I agree, say, that people on the Left have used sexuality in a political way to demonstrate how utterly transgressive they are, and they deliberately like to shove it everyones' faces to make them uncomfortable.

In the end, I agree with Social Conservatives that being a libertine is different from being libertarian.  Choosing to throw out social norms that may be a bit arbitrary doesn't mean that they don't have accumulated wisdom.

My experience is different from others.  I'm more than a bit nerdy and bohemian by nature, and so is my wife and my "type," anyway.  So my youth was spent doing trigonometry homework and arguing about Dr. Who, far less sexting and beer bongs that get other kids in trouble.