You should keep this as a standing response to far too many posts. A few minor adjustments, and you'll have everything covered.

That's a statement about the limits of your memory, which isn't interesting.

Who actually wants this product, and why do they think it's a good idea?

Among the biggest questions when it comes to gun confiscations is “How will we collect the guns that are out there if we don’t know where they are?”

There are all sorts of ways -- most of them a lot scarier than having someone check a registry and visit the registered owners.

I'm old enough to remember when there weren't any non-smoking sections.

I agree with all this, but I still wouldn't be surprised to see a small edge for the traditional family structure, all other things being equal, simply because the playing field is largely designed with that structure in mind. And if there isn't more than a small difference, even with this natural advantage, then that isn't enough to drive either policy or individual decisions.

He referenced social science research which allegedly showed that children raised in homes with a mother and a father did better than children raised in homes consisting of any other combination of parents.

I get tired of hearing this offered as if it meant anything, even if true. For a very long time now, our society has held up the two-opposite sex-biological parent version of the family as the ideal type. Many formal institutions and informal customs heavily favor that sort of set-up. We are used to it. Nobody thinks it strange or in need of justification. It offers genuine conveniences if you can pull it off. Under the circumstances, it would be astonishing if that family structure didn't have some child-rearing advantage.But I am unaware of any study that shows a large difference when you control for certain obvious variables, or shows that other types of family structures don't also produce reasonably good results. There is no more "best interest of the child" justification for taking a child from one set of adequate parents to a different type of presumably adequate parents than there would be for taking just about any child from its family to be raised by Bill and Melinda Gates. And probably less.

There are a lot of interesting things to be said about this topic, but Marco Rubio isn't saying any of them. Most of what he has said is so general that no one disagrees with it. Hell, if you attributed the quoted language (other than the boob-baiting sneer at philosophers) to Barack Obama rather Marco Rubio, almost no one would have been able to say you had gotten it wrong. What does Rubio actually propose, how much does he plan to spend on it, and how does he plan to pay for it? Until then, by all means let's talk about this, but let's leave Marco Rubio out of it until he actually contributes something.

I recall someone who would have been considered pretty far left 40-odd years ago (though I have forgotten exactly who) saying that markets are terrific at producing things consumers can evaluate for themselves and pay for with their own money. You reminded me of one of his examples. Since you mentioned shoes, he said that, for example, the market for clothing works pretty damn well. It produces a wide variety of clothes at various combinations of quality and price, and puts decent clothing within the reach of all but the most destitute. For them, the problem is not the clothing market system, but sheer destitution, which should be dealt with directly, by providing either money or clothing. To the extent that the industry uses some dangerous chemical or dye that the consumer can't realistically be expected to detect, there is a basis for some safety regulation, but that's about it. And this was from someone who thought the fashion industry and the resources and energy that go into it at the expense of more useful pursuits was obscene. Even he advocated leaving the clothing market largely alone.
But where the consumer can't really judge what he is getting, or is paying for it out of someone else's pocket, like housing or healthcare, markets, he held, have many deficiencies.
So, no, almost nobody is opposed to markets in general.

I'm not so sure this is true. If I recall the Dunning-Kreuger studies correctly, the incompetent thought they were more competent than they were while the competent thought they were less competent than they were. The mechanism for the former is easy enough to figure out. As for the latter, maybe the competent had inflated ideas of what "normal" levels of competence were and, therefore, felt themselves to be relatively less competent than, in fact, they were..

This is true, but there are genuine organizational advantages to having an off-the-shelf set of ceremonies for major passages in life, and the major religions have been at it for a while. They have also had the help of folks like Bach and Handel, not to mention the lesser lights who wrote many traditional hymns that even non-believers like. The home-made ceremonies with tunes by poor imitators of Paul Simon can be touching, but the other guys have the aesthetic edge.

I have long thought the Greeks had it right with their Olympian pantheon. The world is run by a committee, and its members are working at cross-purposes.

I'd be astounded if anyone tried to teach Ulysses to freshmen. It seems to me that that would be a pedagogical mistake because too few freshmen are ready for it.

Maybe Silber just wasn't good at "on the one hand....on the other hand."

Moby Grape? That brings back memories.
So does Sgt. Pepper. I remember that I was parking my car near the White Plains federal courthouse when the DJ announced that Sgt. Pepper had been released 25 years ago that day. I did some quick mental math and realized that 25 years before Sgt. Pepper was, say, Benny Goodman or Glenn Miller, both of which I had happened to have listened to more recently than the Beatles. That was the day I realized that I would never be cool again -- if I ever was.

IN the long run, we are all dead.

It might even be worse if they had good, sound reasons that didn't have anything to do with my gender or race -- like maybe I was the asshole.

I've worked for many assholes and been mistreated by many. With one exception, for various reasons, I have never thought my race, sex, or what not was behind the treatment I received, since I am a white male and most of my asshole bosses were as well.
But if you are not a white male, I would think that you would often have cause to wonder. Or would you just know? The uncertainty must be maddening.

The one scenario where Rubio can't be the VP candidate.

I would certainly hope that Hillary has closer ties to Bill than the Bushes do.

There is a legitimate, non-racist, non-xenophobic discussion to be had about immigration, and it should be had. But it would be wonky, loaded with numbers, and -- however important -- boring. It would be a niche issue, like agriculture or shipping.
The immigration discussion we are having today, and have almost always had, isn't that discussion. There are reasons for this.

Precisely.

” REGISTRATION PLATE: Remove the registration plate for transfer to another vehicle or return the plate to PennDOT.”

The plate is sitting in my house. If PennDot wants it, they can ask for it and I’ll give it to them. They never sent me legal notice asking for it. Oh… I guess they don’t always dot their i’s and cross their t’s like the rest of us.

This is pathetic.

So far the only thing you’ve been trying to pin me with is failure to inform PA DMV that I lawfully sold my car to another party and failed to send my license plates in.

(Arguably it’s their responsibility to notify me of this and send postage paid materials for me to use to send the plates back to them.)

This is even more pathetic.

Now, now, don't go spoiling everyone's fun like that.

Most people I know have principles, and some even act on them or reason from them. Too many of those who talk about Principles are really saying, when all the barnacles are scraped off: "I believe X because X."