It was racism that caused Americans to secede from the British crown. It was racism that caused the Yugoslavians to secede from the Soviet Union (just ask Trotsky!) It was racism that caused Indians to secede from Britain -- that racist jerk Gandhi needs to be put in his place! It is racism that causes Tibetans to want independence from China. It is racism that Indonesia is no longer a Dutch colony. Oh, and I bet you Prince Pedro was being racist when he decided to secede from Portugal, too.

I'm going to say something that is sure to get me negative kharma from the polemicists but couldn't it be possible that people are dissenting on the policies of the president rather than on the race of the president?

I got a lot of crap from my family when I told them that I was voting for Obama. Yeah, they were kind of bigots about it. But if you can't actually try to speculate on the rational reasons somebody might want to secede and just chalk it up to "they hate black people" that makes you guilty of bigotry, too.

Me.

Me.

You think they had peace in Trekkiverse? Did you even WATCH the show?

Kethinov speaks the truth. The show was lame even after it had an actual premise (human survival in the brutal cosmos). Why should it be any fun BEFORE they have anything to do and AFTER we already know how anticlimactic humanity's fate is?

... I live in Utah Valley, home of Ye Olde Word Perfect and Novell.

If I don't have mountains to orient myself, I never know where the heck I'm going.

But WITH my mountains, I'm never lost.

You've pretty much touched on the key difference between having a weapon and being armed. The NRA likes to pretend that just having the piece in your trousers will make you into Rambo or somesuch. That's silly.

Having a gun and thinking you're armed is like having a piano and thinking you're a virtuoso. You also need training to go with it.

That's what I'm advocating: Being CAPABLE and equipped. That includes "situational awareness" which makes you less shocked when the shot is finally fired.

He also couldn't have killed fifteen people if the other fourteen had killed him after he shot the first one.

I like PSPad on my Win32 boxes, too. Simple and no-nonsense editor.

I read an article by a historian a few years ago, who cited other historians, who all disagree with you.

Hehe. "I know a guy who knew a guy who said that someone said..."

There is no reason for us to make more physical goods. For the most part, other countries do it better and cheaper. We do what we're best at (capital aggregation)...

Except we're not even good at that anymore. All we have going for us now is that the dollar buys oil. But that's not going to last forever.

How did the gold standard "require deflation?"

Obama's unlikely to change the important parts of American policy that validate the world's hate for us. Sure, Iraq was a big screw up -- but it's really more like the straw that broke the camel's back. We still live like kings here in the states while the rest of the world has children as indentured servants in factories abroad to feed our gluttonous lifestyles. America needs to get back to working hard, saving money, and exporting some usable capital to the rest of the world or we will continue to be resented by the rest of the world.

This "infrastructure," however, is not hard capital that we can export. America needs to export some real goods to the rest of the world. Right now, we're just leaching off of the planet's collective labors.

Considering that the average CEO makes something like 400x the average worker in America

Where do you get this number from?

Why is it such a problem that workers get something back from the government when companies are too greedy to give it to them in the first place?

I don't think it's bad. I just don't trust the government to accomplish this any better than the "CEO's" you imagine. The only thing worse than a greedy, selfish, butt-reaming CEO out to bilk people is thousands of greedy, selfish, butt-reaming bureaucrats doing the same thing.