There must be some limit to immigration. Add too much rice to the gumbo and you don't have gumbo anymore. If we can agree on that, we can argue about how much of which kinds of additions the polity can embrace without changing its essential character. If we cannot agree, then I say unfettered immigration is just slow-motion invasion and conquest. I would repeal the 17th Amendment, to remind us all to focus on the State governments which created the FedGov. Power is not created from above, it is delegated upward. My position would probably apply the 14th a little differently. The points where it was written "Congress shall make no law" have less breadth than "right shall not be infringed".

We need a nation as part of the means of determining which are "us" and which are "them". Any political experiment that doesn't enforce borders will not endure. The Constitutional US of A was probably federal enough to administer an even larger territory and population than it now does. It was empowered to oversee only truly nationwide concerns. But since the democracy fetishists have led to centralizing power in one FedGov (instead of manifold StateGovs), the administrative entity is so big it must fail. Since I hold the Framers' vision in such high regard, I get called both a LINO and a RINO by those respective opposites.

#9: A person recommending an economic policy is not practicing economics.

Funny, I wish I *could* erase the Krofft puppets from my memory.

“Walking, talking, chess playing automaton” reminded me of Moxon’s Master, by Bierce. http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/l_moxon.htm

The anti-IP faction would say the inventor should just keep his new mousetrap mechanism a secret. And/or the inventor can still profit by building a brand for his traps. Misrepresenting the origin of a thing (making a knock-off) is actionable in libertopia under the rules for fraud. Next time I get into one of those arguments, I will have to test them on the fraud angle. If there is no IP, does anyone own their own identity? If I start pretending to be Elvis Presley, the real Elvis is still Elvis and loses nothing according to the “non-scarcity of IP” argument.

I went to a few games, and one or two after the move to the Metrodome. Even if the Kicks didn’t have any superstars, I never got tired of saying, “Ace Ntsoelengoe” in the local accent. Goalkeeper Tino Lettieri still sells a line of gas-station food with his name on it.

I have argued this many times with my libertarian and voluntaryist friends. The anti-IP faction relies on the assertion that copying doesn’t take anything from the creator. There’s a particular Jefferson quote they cannot repeat often enough. I have a counter-argument (©): Exclusivity is itself a value. When a work is copied, exclusivity diminishes. Something is taken, and taken without permission, which constitutes theft. My friends in particular are devout evangelists of Austrian economic theory. There is no objective value, and all interactions are measured by their trade value, implicitly subjective. There is no requirement that a thing to be traded exist in the material realm. A secret can be traded. Or stolen.

It gets worse if you go into downtown Minneapolis. The City is trying several different schemes attempting to create safer bike lanes. The confusing and inconsistent markings not only decrease safety, they snarl traffic.

Even to a non-fan, that was a nifty shot.

Who said anything about white people? If we’re working the stereotypes, black people are supposed to be threatening to everyone. If you’re not doing anything special by wearing a hoodie, are you really showing sympathy and concern, or free-riding on the media windstorm? Integrity.

The calls for arrest are a red herring. Zimmerman was indeed detained at the scene. The PD knows where he is, and he appears to be a low flight risk. If charges are brought, he will be issued a notice to appear. The rabble wants to see a perp walk. That serves the media, but is not necessary to achieve justice. The combination of ignorance and rage work better than chains ever did.

You imagine the sweatshirt and the black man are threatening. Neither actually are, together or separately. What does anyone have to fear from a bunch of whiners led by a charlatan with a megaphone? Cries for justice are cries of “wolf”. Y’all might as well be protesting about Kony. Same dance, different song.

Oh, I do see you. That is why I mock you. What you really mean is that I don’t see you as you wish to be seen. I know I am not welcome in your club. We’re both fine with that, right? Your only relevance derives from your ability to threaten. But the Trayvon Hoodie Soldiers are all soft. They’re not NO_LIMIT_ like little T was. Let me know when you start setting things on fire. That’s where you want to go. Get there already, or get back in line.

Nobody knew the kid three weeks ago. There’s no tribal or familial kinship. The hoodies are a social signal between people serving their own egos. It’s another tiresome instance of whining about “justice” as evidence of virtue. Where is the integrity? Will any of them keep wearing hoodies until justice is achieved? Johnny Cash always wore black. Team Trayvon are chumps being played as puppets.

Remember the Med-Red railway. Those parts of the Islamic world that do not wish to participate in global trade will be bypassed. The ultimate conflict between Islam and other political systems will be resolved by economics. Even Soviet communism generated more wealth than Sharia. It may take centuries, or perhaps not. Growth tends to follow an exponential curve, and the wealth/technology gap may widen very quickly.

As an aggregate, I can accept the American meta-society is not depraved. The conspiracy of goodwill still moderates our base instincts. I suspect the view changes dramatically depending on where one stands. The pockets of depravity, however have grown. In number of pockets, numbers of depraved persons and depths of depravity permitted. If society were a mouth, we have gingivitis. No teeth have fallen out, but those who talk about the importance of brushing are widely dismissed. The Londoners may have not known about the importance of rectitude. They didn’t understanding the connection between flossing and health. While they were sick, we are sickening. The difference is which way each is headed. They became us. Are we becoming them?

There are actually two refineries in suburban St. Paul. You forget that even with a refinery in NoDak, the refined product still has to get to market. We would need something like Keystone anyway. It is somewhat difficult to reverse the flow in a pipeline. We have just reversed the Seaway pipeline at the Cushing, OK, hub (to get more crude to coastal refineries). The coastal refineries almost certainly have outgoing distribution pipelines in place. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/enbridge-buys-into-pipeline-to-reverse-flow-2011-11-16

I have oscillated between being a humpty-dumpty blob and somebody who could successfully wear little gay shorts. About a month ago my Bally’s contract was sold to LA Fitness. The quality of the facilities are night and day. Now exercise is fun again, and something I look forward to. I am not ready to set any goals or make any promises, but having a decent gym again reminds me how important exercise is to my mental stability. The mind lives better in a healthy body. Best wishes in celebrating your physical potential.

“Everybody tries to have what the best have, even if they cannot afford it.” What happens when the best have what they themselves cannot afford? Can an empire shrink without collapsing? Is there no place outside the Empire of Western Civilization? Where do the Amish and the Salafi live? Nobarland matters only to those who count bars.

It’s an empire without an emperor. Semi-spontaneous order arising from the ashes of previous iterations of empire. A confederacy of interwoven frameworks, with robustness and redundancy a product of its heritage. If the upside of computing is infinite, there will be more than one way to get to the moon.

I hear in this the positive vs. normative debate. If every injustice requires some proportional recourse, we first have to establish what ideal justice looks like. And to do that, we have to decide which people’s opinions have greater or lesser value in painting the picture of a just society. It relies upon an aggregation of personal value judgments. Justice begs for a market. Or a meta-market. To propose staged playing fields creates a hierarchy. Maybe the Google+ model works better. We have markets for deciding what justice looks like in various social circles. The circles overlap in many dimensions (they’re really social spheres), but there’s no social universe that includes everyone’s ideal image of justice. Markets can mediate the overlaps, but some factions are irreconcilable. There may not be “human rights”, but if each person has any inalienable rights, the stupid and the bright may never be able to agree on what justice looks like. If there are no individual rights, society and power that follows from having numbers are an expansive luxurious tribalism. The spheres are the tribes. Technology allows tribes to form outside physical parameters. Geography, race and religion are old nexus. IQ, style and taste are new nexus. The more complex a world, the more difficult it is to control. Perhaps the perfect image of justice is forever incomplete.

I assert that you are manifesting a stereotype about black men, sex, and self control. How can I raise the point without mentioning those things? You claim there are 3 women plus White. I count only Krashaur, Bialek and White. Who have I overlooked? I hear the lawyer’s statement as a lawyer’s statement. We might agree that those have a tenuous connection with fact or truth. Thirteen years without a note, photo, receipt or other momento? That’s your standard of proof? The formula of money+access=guilt seems insufficient. All potential offenses are actual offenses? There must be other factors that lead you to your conclusion. By your standards, is Cain black? If so, is his blackness relevant to your beliefs about his sexual history?

You were asked a direct question: Is Cain black? Please show evidence that Cain lied to his wife about any charity he offered to acquaintances. Did he say he lied? All I saw was that his wife did not know of the gifts.

The “veritable tsunami” is 3 people, none of whom can offer anything more than their word. It is interesting that the shrieks of three women, in the absence of any physical evidence, is accepted by you over the word of a man with a general history of integrity. This why I conclude that you agree with CD (who, yes, never stated it outright) that black men are ruled by their base sexual urges. I’m not sure how “ass clown” is used as a qualifier for determining blackness. Is Cain black, or is he not? Since you did not address the “thinking” predicate, can I fairly assume that you were lost in a rhetorical flourish, and that you do indeed credit Herman Cain with a functioning, if not exceptional, mind?