It’s worth noting that apparently the Democrats are attempting to accelerate required Sarbanes Oxley compliance for small businesses. This is the exact opposite of what I said we should do in the financial regulation portion of my Grand Plan.

Good work guys. You’re turning America into the land of stillborn/aborted IPOs. Maybe we’ll have to take companies public in Canada from now on…

Did you all notice Dr. Bishop sport an ascot last night?

I don’t know who these people are, but they call my number and don’t leave a message. Other message boards indicate that picking up does not get anybody to answer. I have submitted a complain at the FTC’s Do Not Call website. This is why every phone service ought to have a blacklist feature, to automatically block time wasters like this.

If anybody has any further information on who these people are, I would appreciate you sharing it here.

UPDATE: It appears to be Register.com. They’re about to lose all my business over this. I am going in to change my phone number with them now.

Blog is back to blue today for Billy Mays. See #wearblueforbilly.

It’s called “Life And Times”. It rocks. Do yourself a favor and go get a copy. I got it off iTunes DRM free.

And not just articulate ones, but ones who are right!

BB&T president John Allison gives an amazing lecture on the origins of the banking crisis in the United States. I admit to learning quite a bit watching it. It’s almost an hour and a half, so block out some time to watch it, and go through the slides while watching the lecture. But this is seriously the best explanation of what has happened that I’ve yet seen.

Watch John Allison.

If I haven’t sent you a Christmas card and you’d like one, let me know in the comments. I have extras.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Legendary pinup queen Bettie Page died of pneumonia at the age of 85 in a Los Angeles, California, hospital Thursday, a week after suffering a heart attack, according to her agent.

“She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality,” said agent Mark Roesler in a written statement. “She is the embodiment of beauty.”

More here.

Apparently, he had cancer. Statement here.

Now is a good time to re-read his excellent essay, “How Aliens Caused Global Warming“.

Good thinker, that guy.

So here a few bits from Earth Day. First the founder of Greenpeace explains why he left:

The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.

My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years.

John Cox celebrates Earth Day; with a finger up the nose.

David exhorts us not to buy the hype.

And on a different note, check out the Solatube.

George Will is on fire over the recent Fed moves. Welcome to the party:

The late Sen. William Proxmire, a populist Democrat who represented Wisconsin for 32 years, wanted all members of Congress to write on their bathroom mirrors, so it is the first thing they read each day, this: “The Fed is a creature of Congress.”[...]

Today’s argument is that Bear Stearns was so connected to the financial system in opaque ways that no one could guess the radiating consequences of its failure — the financial consequences or, which sometimes is much the same thing, psychological.

But what is now the principle by which other distressed firms will elicit Fed interventions in future uncertainties? By what criteria does Washington henceforth determine whether a large entity is “too connected to fail”?

The Fed has no mandate to be the dealmaker for Wall Street socialism. The Fed’s mission is to preserve the currency as a store of value by preventing inflation. Its duty is not to avoid a recession at all costs; the way to get a big recession is to engage in frenzied improvisations because a small recession, aka a correction, is deemed intolerable. The Fed should not try to produce this or that rate of economic growth or unemployment.[...]

If Congress cannot suppress its itch to “do something” while markets are correcting the prices of housing and money, Congress could pass a law saying: No company benefiting from a substantial federal subvention (which would now include Morgan) may pay any executive more than the highest pay of a federal civil servant ($124,010). That would dampen Wall Street’s enthusiasm for measures that socialize losses while keeping profits private.

Read George Will.

So I’ve written about the shifting fault line in American politics before. My basic thesis is that with socialism out of the way, party politics will re-align with civil-libertarians and economic-libertarians aligning under one party roof, with the other party roof basically looking something like the Christian Democrat parties of Europe except more fundy.

The operative question is: which party will become which? Will black Christians eventually migrate over to the Republicans with their fellow white Baptists, or will civil-libertarian democrats wind up migrating over to the Republicans? According to Daniel Henninger, the Democrats are making a play for white Christians to head their way:

Remember the culture wars? This week the Democrats sued for peace.[...]

But even Karl Rove couldn’t invent God, and God and faith were everywhere in Grantham Sunday evening.

Sen. Clinton: Faith “is everything that makes life and its purpose meaningful as a human being . . . We want religion to be in the public square. If you are a person of faith, you have a right and even an obligation to speak from that wellspring of your faith . . . Our obligation as leaders in America is to make sure that any conversation about religion is inclusive and respectful. And that has not always happened, as we know.”

Sen. Obama: “Religion is a bulwark . . . Somebody like myself whose entire trajectory, not just during this campaign, but long before, has been to talk about how Democrats need to get in church, reach out to evangelicals, link faith with the work that we do . . . There is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down. I think that’s a mistake . . . A comprehensive approach where we focus on abstinence, where we are teaching the sacredness of sexuality to our children.”

Some bloodless analysts have said for several years that Democrats had to say this to win because, you know, a lot of people “go to church.” And yes, what candidates seeking votes say may be false, faked or fantastic. What remains is the fact that these two, in competition for votes, have conferred political legitimacy and respect on this swath of America.

It remains to be seen where people actually head. But I do think that things are shifting. Economic-libertarians have no obvious home, religiously informed voters will eventually unite around one party, a party that preaches some form of mild socialism along side with social critiques, and the capitalists will unify with the ACLU and the gays and others to form the other party. I personally figured that the Republicans would wind up as the Religious party, since switching on the abortion stand seems to be impossible for either party to do. But I could be wrong.

Read my original essay on the Fault Line in American Politics.

Sorry blogging has been light as of late. Been extremely busy. But here’s a few links you can chew on. Hopefully, I’ll have time to blog the VP debate tonight:

Demon Kitties
Combining the Internet with the UN
Technical Evanuation of Election Methods

I’m feeling sick today. I’ll blog some tomorrow.

What a magnanimous opening. Wow.

Loud, noisy bar, excuse my poor blogging.

Instapundit is pointing out (1, 2) that everyone is making Dukakis references to Kerry these days. I’d like to point out my August 18th comments, foreshadowing this very problem:

Kerry’s problem is that his instincts tell him to get on all sides of every issue, but his base tells him to oppose everything Bush does. So when Bush does something that really isn’t partisan or ideological, like propose troop movements (which incidentally, has been talked about for years now), Kerry feels obliged to weigh in against it. But when Bush does something that may be seen as ideological, such as wage war against Iraq, he tries to get on all sides of the ideology while specifically opposing every tactical move Bush makes. It’s as if he wants to say that this election is about competence, not about ideology. This does not produce consistent policy positions (or speeches for that matter), and I suspect that come November people will find Kerry to be too confusing to elect as President.

For those not in the know, the link is a quote from Dukakis’ famous acceptance speech at the 1988 convention, where he disavowed ideology only to have his obvious ideological leanings pinned on him like a scarlet letter. The root cause of this trend among the Democrats is that the ideology that they hold, namely socialism (as Arnold so aptly pointed out at the convention) was soundly rejected, for both ideological and practical reasons, at the end of the cold war by the vast majority of the American people.

The debate that is taking place at coffee shops and diners today is between conservatism and libertarianism. To paraphrase GWB from his convention, modern conservatism believes that the role of the government is “help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives,” while libertarianism believes government’s role is to get out of the way. Both sides are closer together on economic matters than liberals and conservatives, but on social issues they differ immensely, perhaps more so than liberals and conservatives.

So the question is this: Can the Democrat Party remake itself in a manner more reflective of one side of this debate, or will they disengage and go the way of the Federalists and Whigs. Time will tell.

In the meantime, Kerry continues to confuse, bringing my November prediction little early.

Read my wisdom.

What’s the best gift you can give a college sophmore from Oregon (head full of Chomsky and Rage Against The Machine lyrics, pockets full of Dad’s money) who is desperately itching for something real and exciting in his life? Why, a night on Rikers of course.

Having been on the receiving end of the NYPD more than once in the past I can tell you that it’s not fun, but it builds character. Normally it’s not easy for someone as libertarian minded as I am to come out on the side of the cops, but there are so many jackasses in the streets right now that all bets are off. And frankly I made my peace with the police after 9/11. Now I live three blocks from a cop bar in Queens. I go there to watch baseball games. I can tell you that with all the other things they have to worry about right now, the average NYPD officer’s patience for amped-up, bandana-wearing, twenty year old white kids from the west coast is wearing thin.

(I won’t bother providing links. All the arrest stories in the MSM are mostly utter crap, written by nostalgia-laden boomers or gen-x’rs who wish they were boomers)

A journalist commits a “Lapham” when he brings to his coverage of significant political events a predetermined storyline, ignoring or explaining away inconvenient facts that undermine the storyline.

The term now has the official blogosphere seal of approval.

Here are the recaps.

Loved McCain:

“John Kerry should take speech-making lessons from John McCain. And if McCain is busy, he should try Giuliani.”

Had no use for McCain:

“[McCain] reminds me of Don Rickles? brother. The smart one who went to college and never made as much money as his famous sibling, and it rankled. Oh how it rankled.”

And then there’s Did not notice either McCain’s or Giuliani’s speeches because he was too busy salivating.

My overall impression from two hours surfing various corners of the blogosphere this morning. . . they loved Giuliani’s speech. At least the center to center-right corners of the blogosphere did. Of course, he’s got 2nd Amendment problems, which hurts among libertarians and conservatives, and he’s got gay-lovin’ problems which helps him among libertarians and hurts him among conservatives. But, as with everything else this cycle, all those issues are decidedly 2nd and 3rd tier. What matters is the global fight for freedom, and on that issue he nailed it.

UPDATE: Unofficial consensus (via email) McCain was intellectual and poetic and excellent and Giuliani was emotional and compelling and the bloggers are having a ball at this convention. This has got to be the first convention season where a sizable chunk of people turned off their tee-vees the second the live speeches finished and went straight to the Internet.

Cafe Hayek, one of my new favorite blogs, reveals the historical accuracy of the answer to that important question, when it comes to picking Presidential election victors.

I am compelled, I can’t stop myself, it’s just too good. I know, I know, nothing more tired on this side of the blogosphere than to link to Lilecks when we all (obviously, yawn) read him every week anyway; it’s only natural, like the sun rising. It would be like linking to Glenn Reynolds; not necessary, since active readership is presumed.
Alas, it’s not true. Y’all would be amazed to discover how many intelligent people do not in fact read Lilecks (but still read the NYTimes! Go figure).
I have learned to resist the temptation to email the link to everyone I know. Instead, I post it on Samablog. Sorry Rob, but that’s what you get for giving me the power: a spastic, infinitely blognerdy “ya gotta read Lilecks!”

As Samablog readers know, Rob has had many crazy ideas about the power grid. Well apparently, like other Samastuff, reality and mildly deranged fantasy are meeting pleasantly in the middle.

I think most of us who read Samablog are in agreement that the philosophical goal of our civilization should be to maximize liberty and autonomy for all people. I shouldn’t have to add that there must also be a commensurate increase in personal responsibility and self discipline – you can’t have one without the other, nothing is free except for illusion. Now, I know that some people value security over liberty; indeed, they argue that there can be no real liberty without security. In other words: you need a big, powerful government to make everybody secure, and then they will be free. While that might be true in the sense that we must have a government capable of providing a defense from foreign threats (as well as gangs and criminals at home), everything else is up for debate. That?s not a debate I want to engage in right now (mostly because I am already fifteen years past college political philosophy classes).

Anyway, back to what I was driving at.

In the 1990s it was fashionable to be ?post-historical,? to think that history was, essentially, over: human rights and dignity, prosperity and world government had run out: it was all pets.com, universal healthcare and UN conferences from here on in.

Then all at once we learned that history was still very much in-effect. And that the post-historical theorizing had proven catastrophically false.

So what happens when the post-historical meet the pre-historical?

It would appear that the post-historical stick their heads in their ground and do their best to pretend. But I guess that’s a vialbe option for them, since it worked the last time we had a worldwide conflict of civilizations and ideologies: the West versus the Soviet Union.

It?s easy enough to do. I mean, living in the USA, safe and sound, economically prosperous, the post-historical can afford to spout the most inane nonsense and otherwise just sort of wait it out. One of the most amazing things about being a US citizen is that ? with relatively little effort – you can live entirely in your own reality, knowing that someone else will defend the country, develop new technologies, start and grow companies, create jobs, and so forth. While I suppose economically that is much easier to do in France, it is easier to do socially in America: you can quickly find a world of your own (and in beautiful places too, like California or Vermont).

So, in ten or twenty years, after the hard work of defeating the Islamofascist ideology has been done, the post-historical can crawl out and say ?ha, I told you so, it was never a real threat, I was right all along? ? much like so many professors and government officials, after a lifetime of being phenomenally, staggeringly wrong about anything having to do with the Soviet Union, came out in the 90s saying, ?oh the whole thing was overblown, it was never really a big threat.?

It wasn?t eh? Well, here?s a link for you (in case you had any question about what the most murderous 20th century ideology was).

There will indeed come a time when all peoples on this planet live in societies where they are in command of their lives, thoughts and futures; when liberty and human aspiration (and human potential) are fully realized. But we?re still a long, long way from there.

this post enabled by airblogging.com.

Here’s a good cause for those of you in the Boston area:

Frederick Douglass Charter School Fundraising Event

Join us for a Special Advance Screening!

Frederick Douglass Charter School

Josh Cohen has this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists, and I’m pissed, because I really like his blog, and I meant to submit something this week, but with all my bandwidth issues (500,000 hits on Wed, no kidding), I just couldn’t keep up. In any event, you can always submit yourself by sending email to capitalists at elhide dot com.

Check it out.

this post enabled by airblogging.com.