The Declaration of Dependence

I didn't invent the title phrase, but it fits the issue before America. If Obama wins, then America will have preferred a man who

-advocates 're-distribution', meaning 'theft', of private wealth by the state to its clients,
-has a pleasing baritone and non-threatening manner,
-thwarted the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in Illinois,
-opposed funding the military in Iraq unless the Commander-In-Chief declared a date for US retreat,
-is a close, long-term associate of anti-American racists, criminals and terrorists,
-is the preferred candidate of Iran, Hamas and the New York Times

over a man who

-is a hero,
-takes political risks,
-was right about Iraq,
-has deep political experience,
-is anti-socialist.

Not a tough choice, you'd think. But for decades the giant US government has paid the Left to re-construct the country's DNA and spawn a coalition of tenurists, identity groups, social engineers, risk-avoiders, radical secularists and naifs who want to expropriate the wealth earned by better men and women and then control their lives.

The time calls for happy warriors like Sarah Palin. This experience is forging her. She will have been tested as very few in politics.

Uncorrelated.com down

I'm a minor member of this group blog. The site is down thanks to obscure arguments about processor cycles and MovableType scripts. Meanwhile I commend the site of a fellow member on Uncorrelated, Anne Leary. She and I both use Blogger, the free Google service, which by and large just works.

Christian the lion

What a story!

Mark's Republic

I've long assumed that this Presidential election would be a landslide. Obama is so unqualified, so disqualified by background, so left-wing, so unexecutive, so incoherent that my confidence in the US electorate made me confident in a heavy defeat for Obama. That should have been more certain given the VP picks, Fannie Mae, Surge success and so on. But I was wrong. With 2 weeks to go the polls definitely lean Obama. I console myself by imagining a conservative renewal in the next 4 years, but I know that the Left today are more formidable than in 1976. They have no shame and will likely use the DOJ and every other tool to infiltrate Liberal Fascism deeper still into the social DNA of America. As we skip towards that lengthening shadow, let me set down some principles for Mark's Republic to improve the US Constitution:

1. Voting shall be a privilege reserved for adults over 25 who pay tax. Military service also shall qualify a citizen to vote.

2. Taxation shall be the same for every citizen, $10,000 or less per year, and shall only be paid by non-military voters. The only sanction for non-payment shall be omission from the published list of voters. Government shall shrink as necessary to fit this taxation and taxation shall shrink as necessary to fit this government. Unless agreed by taxpayer referenda requiring a super majority to be renewed each year, there shall be no other tax except tax hypothecated for emergencies. Tax from each taxpayer shall be divided equally between each state and the United States.

3. Elected representatives shall serve for the honour of public service, but not for pay, and shall be subject to term limits at the federal level.

4. Preferences on any grounds or none shall be legal in the private sphere, but illegal in the public sphere.

5. There shall be no public health service, but no child or military veteran shall be denied medical assistance for want of funds.

6. Marriage shall be a wholly private institution. There shall be no legal implication other than the overriding social interest to protect children. Spouses or anyone else may use the law of contract to define any material aspects they wish.

If your first reaction is 'how simplistic', think how the Framers would react to what we have now. Imagine the liberating effect on private enterprise, private charity, civic equality and civic pride.

Update: Barbarian Barney Frank provokes this apt quote from Robert Heinlein in The Corner-

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.... [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.

In praise of stiff lips

Married to a beautiful New Yorker myself, I've heard Madonna's point of view before:

She says he was “typical of emotionally-stunted British men” and refuses to ever date another Brit. The pal said: “Madonna’s convinced British men are light years behind Americans when it comes to emotional honesty and sophistication.”

And she's right about this retard. I avoid emo-diarrhoea and use reticence to protect real feeling and privacy. Moreover it's bad manners gratuitously to inflict my self on others, unless with wit and bravado. It's not an American/British divide at all, more of an Obama/Palin divide or a child/adult divide about what's at the centre of things. Poor Guy Ritchie. Talk about learning the hard way. If you haven't seen Snatch or Lock,Stock you have 2 delights in front of you.

The Shard of Glass

Here's a link to a little video about the projected Shard of Glass, which will be the tallest building in Europe. If you know where to look you can see my flat.

Armageddon Shmarmageddon

Drudge has some fine links today:

Kiddies on drugs personify the Obama message

Congress is trying to enact The Communist Manifesto

and most essential 

Bankruptcy is good for society

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

Put Armageddon on hold

My policy is Victory! I'm long and strong mining and building materials from this morning (or possibly long and wrong, if an even fouler crap sandwich gets enacted in which case I'll bail). Best is complete failure of the Bill To Socialize American Housing and Finance, then getting out of the way so that private American ingenuity and guts can let rip, helped by radical tax cuts and radical spending cuts. Let the government promote a national security driven program, a Homeland Surge, to drill for oil, build clean coal and nuclear power stations and renew infrastructure - pronto, pronto - all with private money like an Anti-Keynes. (I said I was long building materials). That would galvanize the markets and galvanize America with a sense of national purpose for your benefit and our children's instead of a nation which buys pills now to be paid for by our children. The moral disgrace of modern public finance saps morale and purpose.

John McCain, can you hear me? You can lead by adopting a coherent, simple message, my message, the House Republican message, your party's message. Oh and no more compassionate conservatism, it's too cruel.

¡Ay, caramba! or, possibly, Banzai!

Snobs' corner (continued)

I mentioned a London thread about the US election before. I'm in it for fun rather than intellectual nourishment. My latest post:

Stephen Fry -

I have often felt a hot flare of shame inside me when I listen to my fellow Britons casually jeering at the perceived depth of American ignorance, American crassness, American isolationism, American materialism, American lack of irony and American vulgarity. Aside from the sheer rudeness of such open and unapologetic mockery, it seems to me to reveal very little about America and a great deal about the rather feeble need of some Britons to feel superior.

Ok, if this is about swapping Youtube clips, here's my offering (much profanity):

Papabile

I want to commend Peter Robinson's video interview with Archbishop Charles Caput of Denver, starting here.

His previous interview with another Christian, the thriller writer Andrew Klavan, was equally exhilarating. I am somewhat irreligious, but I am invigorated by the intelligence and clarity of these men.

Wasting electrons

A RonPauline chess opponent of mine asks:

Why do you defend Palin, so wholly unqualified for high office?

What do you think of the ABC News poll that has Obama 9 points ahead?

I reply:

I'll spell it out tho I know I'm wasting electrons:

1. It is beyond dispute that Palin (business, Mayor, AOGCC, Governor) has more executive experience than Obama and Biden, who have none.

2. It is beyond dispute that Biden is a joke.

3. It is beyond dispute that Obama has the most left-wing voting record in the Senate.

4. It is beyond dispute that Obama killed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in Illinois.

5. It is beyond dispute that Obama has never crossed his party as a reformer. Palin rose thru that.

6. It is beyond dispute that Palin is more experienced in competitive elections. 

7. It is beyond dispute that Alaskans (80-86%) regard her as a great success in executive office.

There's much more that is beyond dispute before you get to talking about policy where she is far superior, but that's opinion.

Sam Harris partially quotes and distorts her positions and record and family because, like you, he is deranged on religion and Iraq.

Before you question Palin, who is beyond dispute a successful politician and administrator, you need to obtain credibility by answering points 1-7. Unfortunately for your position those points are unanswerable in good faith and I'm not interested in bad faith moonbatism.

Re the ABC poll:

It may be right.

It may be wrong due to grotesque oversampling of Democrats, bearing in mind that it's ABC.

It may be wrong due to an inverse Bradley effect in polls - that is the tendency towards affirmative action answers.

It may be wrong because it conflicts with this mornings WSJ/NBC poll (48/46)

It may be wrong because modern polls have almost always overstated the Dem Presidential candidate relative to the outcome. This is a structural problem.

Again, it may be right. It may be that the overwhelming dominance of the left-wing and culturally depraved in the mainstream media, academia, the legal profession, unions and government employees has so poisoned America that a blatant fraud like Obama can become President. Good luck.