What the friggin hell are you rambling about? I’m part of “your” generation and nothing in this world pisses me off as much as someone else purporting to speak for me. You are so, so wrong and your logic is atrocious! “We” (meaning you, of course) didn’t “invent” ageism, so we (you, again) are free to club everybody else over the head with it. Yeah, nice.

As for liberals spending the 80s sitting on their hands, I actually work with a whole slew of liberals in the age bracket you delineate and they were quite busy. They have been busy For The Past Forty Years. Unlike you, apparently, Mr [moderated]. (Wah, I’m going to blame everybody else, since it’s too hard to work together to foment change.)

As a member of the generation that Paul here is attempting to hijack, let me say that NO, in fact MY generation does not think that boomers are all the same. Because that would be stupid and lazy, and really some of us do enjoy thinking.

My point is precisely that I don’t give a damn about the political opinions – past or present, professed or “real” – of those born between 1946 and 1961.

Actions speak louder than opinions, and baby boomers over the last two decades have – by act or omission – thoroughly convinced my generation that boomers are all the same in the end. Like I said, we didn’t invent ageism . . .

So you’re able to figure out the political opinions of someone by the way they drive their SUV, or by the houses they buy? I’m sure there are lots of sociologists & political scientists reading this blog who would love to hear about your methodology—it would be a great time-saver.

Who’s “us” and “them” here? What seems to be getting missed is that age, not nominal left/right political affiliation is the great divider.

For the record, I’m well to the political left. And like SP’s Matt Stone, I really fucking hate middle-aged liberals. “Hippies” who hog the roads in their SUVs, hog the mainstream media airwaves (and the white-collar job market more generally), and whose greed has made buying a property unaffordable for my generation . . . I could go on.

While I don’t like conservatives of my generation, either, they are still to be preferred to sanctimonious middle-aged liberals.
In particular, the youthful Right can hardly be blamed for growing up in the greed-is-good 80s – the decade in which liberals entirely spent sitting on their hands (apart from once going to Live-Aid, perhaps).

So it’s chuffing for me that Doctor Biobrain actually sounds a little bit threatened. It’s been a long time coming, Dr B, but the payback’s going to be a bitch. And the more your generation squeals, the more we’re going to impassively respond that it was your generation who invented ageism, anyway, with that “never trust anyone over 30” BS.

Some, but not a great deal. What “South Park Conservatives” tend to hate most is nanny-state niggling, not the state per se.

Border-line Asperger’s syndrome might explain a bit of it.

But the SP Cons are a new wave which DOES represent conservative thinking. They’re much smarter than the religious conservatives, and their nihilistic attitudes towards laissez-faire are much more infectious. And while they dislike the ineffective religious cons, they’re more than willing to keep their mouths shut in order to focus on their true enemy. Us.

Or, to quote SP’s Matt Stone, “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.” They’re coming after us, and are more than willing to temporarily cozy up with the religious cons to do it. We can laugh at them, but we do so at our own peril.

http://www.reason.com/hod/db042805.shtml

Cato’s policy analysts probably spend more time on economic issues, but that’s Cato’s particular niche. Reason these days is (sadly) more into tangential culture commentary anyway.

In any case, neither is a particularly good barometer of the libertarian movement as a whole. I don’t know that there is such a generalist barometer, frankly. Your typical libertarian blog, for example, will have a distinct specialization— the economists do econ stuff, the rights-theorists do rights theory, etc. Silber makes the “bingo issues” his specialty to a greater degree than most, certainly.

http://coldfury.com/reason/index.php

For some more detailed examination of the latest legal outrages, Kip Esquire at kipesquire.powerblogs.com is always good too. And Hit and Run had an item on the Virginia outrage a year ago, back when it was breaking news—they’ve also reported on several of the other bingo squares, most recently I think the Alabama legislator thing.

Really, this sort of formulaic “where’s the outrage” bullshit coming from people who’ve obviously not bothered to look around at all is just silly.

FDA set to ban gay men as sperm donors – New rules aimed at preventing spread of AIDS, officials say

“Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he’s been celibate for five years,” said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors.

I have a feeling it’s more about the fear of some magical passing around of gayness to offspring, which would be oh such a Bad Thing.

If it was fear of HIV, why aren’t they testing everyone already?

sound of crickets

Might note that the ‘banning of contracts’ is between any adults, not just gay ones. So my grandmother can’t choose via contract who has joint access to her property and will make emergency decisions for her. Glade she doesn’t live in Ohio.

PS: Your table is wider than your frames; the left frame dangles over the table making the final column unreadable at 600 pixels browser…