Tonight I had a discussion on voting with Allison. She asked me what it meant. I explained, “It’s like when mommy asks you if you want cereal or toast for breakfast, and when you pick one that is voting for it.” She said, “Or pancakes?” I said, “sure, or picking pancakes over the other choices.”

I then added the democratic majority wrinkle. I explained, “If 10 people were asked to vote, and you said you wanted pancakes, but the other 9 wanted toast, then you would all have to have toast.” She said, “I wouldn’t like that.” I said, “Sometimes I don’t like it either.”

Michelle had talked with her earlier about voting and told her about my decision to not vote for any of the Presidential candidates. So she said, “Mommy said you didn’t vote for one.” I told her, “If you had to vote for food, and you had to pick tomatoes or sausage (two things she doesn’t like) which would you pick?” She said, “I wouldn’t vote for either.” And neither did I.

In other news the barbie lamp won in a historic vote, defeating fish by a narrow margin of one vote and “play games on iPhone” defeated “go to sleep now” by a similarly narrow margin.

“A government of laws, and not of men.” -John Adams

This statement rang out loud and clear to me when I saw the Extent of Federal Regulation made concrete, here.

What John Adam’s statement makes clear is the essential fact in a proper government that the law must be knowable and objective not subject to arbitrary whims of arbitrary men.

This does not mean 25 feet thick of books of regulations, and 6 feet of laws. When both are being added to at a rate of thousands of new laws and regulations per year, you have a situation where it is not possible to know in a single lifetime what is permissible action in a free society.

I do not advocate anarchy, rather objective law. It is impossible to have objective law when every action could require months or years of research to determine if it is punishable by the state. This of course is only the Federal regulations. Every state and town has their own collections of law books.

The solution, stop and repeal. The obvious starting point for repeal is any and all regulations that handcuff industry. And stop all of the regulation mills. There are many government agencies that issue Rules. Congress has delegated it’s law making responsibility to faceless, nameless, and unaccountable bureaucrats.

Dr. Leonard Peikoff, friend and intellectual heir to Ayn Rand, publishes a podcast approximately every other week. Despite the fact that he generally refuses to talk publicly about narrow political questions, he took some time in his October 20 podcast to discuss the current batch of candidates. He managed in a few sentences to say the obvious about each of the candidates in a way that would be funny if one of these gangs wouldn’t be the head of the Executive branch of the United States of America on January 20th.

I think McCain comes across as a tired moron. Obama as a lying phony. Biden as an enjoyably hilarious windbag. And Sarah Palin as an opportunist struggling to learn how to become a moron a phony and a windbag.

He gave some additional brief commentary as to why none of the Presidential candidates is fit to take office. If you think there is still some reason to choose one over the other but aren’t sure which you may want to listen, it could give starting points for further investigation.

I decided some time ago that I will not vote for any presidential candidate. It was with that decision in mind that Dr. Peikoff’s statement takes on a tragic humor and does cause me a brief chuckle.

The MSM had plenty to say about a 600 point drop in the Dow two Fridays ago when the house rejected the initial bailout plan. The blamed congress for not violating individual property rights and granting a large scale bailout of wall street to try and prop up a failing economy. Lucky for us they were able to paint the picture as simplistic that the federal government had an button under glass in the Capitol building which said in case of economic emergency break glass. So the congress got to work, they broke the glass. Now as I write the market is down significantly and is bouncing, but I suspect this is just a harbinger of greater plummets. The Fed of course will print more money and lower interest rates, but this will serve to drive inflation even faster.

The problem is not the wrong intervention or even not intervening quickly enough, the problem is government intervention in the economy at all. Government is the agency of force. Economic prosperity requires freedom, freedom to act on ones own judgment for ones own interest. The only role for the government in the economy is rooting out and prosecuting fraud and other uses of force. It is not a coincidence that the nation that was founded on individual rights and freedom is the most prosperous ever. It is government intervention that caused this problem and that will continue it. If the Congress wanted to act quickly they should have been discussing how to repeal laws which are applying friction to business, not make the biggest power grab for the central economic planners since the Great Depression.

The politicians have been blaming the “greedy” capitalists. But those capitalists that are so greedy, are the ones that create wealth and jobs.

The long term outlook of government intervention in the economy is clear and clearly terrible.

It is clear from the results and the form letters I receive from my Congressmen, for spending time writing well reasoned arguments, is not worth the effort. I have therefore decided to change my tactics. While I know at best my letters will be tallied into No support or Yes support piles by bored staffers, and at worst ignored completely, I can only hope to amuse myself through the time spent writing such letters.

As such I couldn’t stop myself when I received a form letter from Senator Robert Casey in response to my many pleas to vote ‘No’ on this bailout plan in which he rationalized his position. I decided the only tactic that would prevent me from becoming homicidal was to introduce sarcasm. As such my letter follows:

(more…)

I defy you to explain to me the difference between Barack Obama’s sentiment, “We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.” And the one uttered by Kang in Treehouse of Horror VII, “Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.”

American politics is not even trying to hide the fact that their words are absolutely meaningless and they are just trying to unlock the right combination to get elected. Playing a high stakes crossword puzzle.

By the way, please don’t interpret this as support for the Republicans. Their allegiance with the Religious Right is an outright attack on the first amendment and until they renounce this partnership I cannot even consider supporting their candidates.

Many of you know I was hoping that Bush would not win re-election. However, he obviously will be president for the next 4.

Of course what this means to me: taking a broad view, not a whole lot either way. My immediate and primary concern is still my family and making sure we all have enough to eat and some left over for toys. And no matter who was in the presidential office my day to day life would be impacted very little.

Would Kerry have been significantly different than 4 more with Bush? In many aspects, no. Some of the policies they fought so bitterly over in the debates were nearly identical. My only political course of action at this time is to do what I always do, when I see things happening at the Federal level that I disagree with, then I will contact my representation and let them know. And if I see things that I want to happen, again make the reps do their job, even if that means willfully ignorning my input, but at least dealing with it in some way.

Anyway here are some general thoughtoids I have manufactured, and had thrust upon me recently.

• Some of the Republican principles are very acceptable: minimal government, less taxes, responsibility. Hopefully the elected from that party can enbody and enact some of those principles.
• If in four years things have changed for the percieved worse, the current administration will not have the excuses of an already declining economy and (hopefully) there will be no massive civilian loss of life on the homeland.
• I like Bush’s Social Security plan. I hate watching that counter on my paycheck tick off without the ability to manage the investment of my money!. Even though I feel many will oppose me holding my funds back from the general social security coffers, I would really like this to become a reality. I will let my (All Republican) federal representation know about my thoughts. Heck even better, just cut me a check for everything I have contributed in my name (number rather) and I’ll roll it into an IRA.
• I think the repubs are pushing federal tax free medical spending accounts too, like the kind all you people who work at big companies have access to. Well I will push for this too. Yeah, yeah the last two are the fabled promises and I know the fall of Rome came from the electorate voting for more Bread and Circuses, but I just want the bread I earned.
• I have seen my current thoughts and feelings compared to how a more mature generation felt when Nixon was re-elected. Their advice: “Get over it.” If the current administration is as bad as many feel it is, they now have enough rope to hang themselves.
• The media’s portrayal of the partisan standoff and bickering is a little over done. Maybe the pundits hate each other that much, but I don’t feel it accurately portrays what happens on CSPAN .