Obama’s infomercial last night was a failure:

Two leading infomercial stars agree: Barack Obama’s half-hour self-promotion last night was a flop.

“I don’t see enough smiling. Doom and gloom totally,” said Anthony Sullivan, one of the biggest names in infomercial history.

Its funny to think about the presidential campaign being compared to the Soloflex and Ron Popeil’s pasta maker. I guess such comparisons are inevitable when one of the candidates allows millions of dollars from large corporations fill his coffers. Right Darwin?

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey quotes an expert on the checks put in place to protect against credit card fraud and how it seems the Obama campaign bypassed these checks to facilitate acquiring donations:

The value of the AVS system is to deny Card Not Present transactions (CNP) which are suspicious. This protects the merchant against charge backs for bad transactions. What is interesting to me is that the merchant acquirer has knowingly violated a basic CNP fraud prevention technique to accommodate a merchant (Obama Campaign). I think that both the Associations (VISA & MasterCard) would be highly interested in looking at the merchant acquirer that was processing these transactions. The value of ignoring the AVS responses is that multiple invalid transactions may be made without fear of being rejected by the authorization systems. This means that the real owner of the credit card account is willing to allow multiple transactions to be made on the account using different names and addresses that under normal conditions would be denied. The merchant acquirer has a complete listing of all transactions done and it would be very interesting to see how many transactions were conducted on the same account number using different names. I would think that this would be a Federal violation under the current campaign funding laws.

I anxiously await Darwin’s strong denunciations of the Obama’s campaigns attempts to circumvent basic checks against credit card fraud to facilitate campaign donations. Darwin supports such regulations so I fully expected him to have harsh words for campaigns that attempt to circumvent such regulations, even democratic ones.

Make sure you stick around for diplomacy.

I honestly wish this was practically all the federal government did all day.

Over at TCS Daily, Paul Betson has a piece looking at how the candidates use their respective political labels.

Americans learned over several decades what liberalism, at least modern liberalism, was all about. Contrary to some claims that conservatives, in a sinister plot, defamed the word, liberalism did a pretty good job defaming itself: from the anything-goes ethos of the 1960s to radical war protestors, from tax-and-spend government and welfare policies to lax criminal justice, pacifism abroad, and a wide-ranging contempt for the institutions and values of American life, liberals took what had been the dominant political current in American politics and made it into a pejorative term. Today, while centrist American voters may blanch at some of the Republican Party’s positions, they have no wish to go back to governmental progressivism.

If they did, Obama-never one to miss a rhetorical trick–would be resurrecting the word “liberal” as change we can believe in.

Obama’s evasion of the implications of “liberal” are worth noting by contrast with conservatism, a “label” that most politicians of that persuasion accept gladly, if they aren’t already wrapping themselves in the mantle. Whatever the despair of the Bush years, conservatism does not come saddled with the hardened negatives that centrists and independents tend to associate with liberalism. For many, it still represents sensibility and practicality, as well as success, dating back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The Bush years have in fact not discredited conservatism, a point made suggestively–if, one senses, accidentally–by, of all people, Michael Dukakis.

“‘What’s conservative about invading Iraq?” he asked in a Washington Post story. “What’s conservative about a $400 billion deficit?” Though Dukakis went on to say, shades of 1988, that “The terms have lost their meaning,” his rhetorical questions underscore that even liberals don’t connect the Bush administration’s failures to traditional conservative principles. They criticize Bush by holding his policies up to conservative standards–and finding him lacking. What Bush has discredited is not conservatism, but the Republican Party. The number of Americans answering to that party identification has slipped markedly since Bush entered the White House.

David over at The Volokh Conspiracy pulls some choice text from a liberal:

Nor do I believe that conservatives should never receive honorary degrees. There are conservative scholars who do work that is respected within academia—many economists, for example—and they would not be inappropriate candidates for such an honor. Nor would I have a problem with conservative pundits, so long as they’re sane and genuinely distinguished (which these days admittedly narrows the field to practically zero), such as the late William F. Buckley. I’ll even grudgingly accept the reality that conservative Republican elder statesmen are regularly awarded these things. Though even here there are limits—while personally I wouldn’t protest the awarding of a degree to George H.W. Bush, even though I find him pretty hateful, far-right lunatics like Cheney, Dubya, and Jesse Helms should be entirely out of bounds…. as much as conservatives may whine and scream to the contrary, liberalism and conservatism are not moral equivalents. Because, on the one side you have the thinkers and activists who have advanced freedom, social justice, and human rights, and on the other, you have those who have attempted to thwart all those things.

And one wonders how liberal became a dirty little world.

I imagine not a single one of my readers would agree with this. Refrain from posting the painfully obvious comment that there are conservative who speak like this as well. To that I would say, well no shit Sherlock.

Marc Ambinder argues had McCain made the mistake Obama made, that the press coverage would of been much more extensive.

What do you think. I tend to agree.

An excellent opinion piece examines the hypocrisy of the religious views of some liberals.

Open the pages of a liberal magazine or peruse the liberal blogosphere, and you’re bound to come across denunciations of the religious right, if not religion itself. The “reality-based community,” as self-satisfied liberal bloggers call themselves, was a term created in direct response to the “faith-based community,” what the Bush administration called recipients of money from its Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Given the religious right’s use of “faith” to justify hoaxes such as “intelligent design” and the ruinous attempt to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, the left had good reason to criticize, and sometimes mock, the absurdities that are the inevitable result of religion mixing with politics.

Yet the left, with its healthy skepticism toward religion, has shown itself to be cynically flexible over the past few weeks in response to the utter insanities emitted from the big mouth of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor, mentor and friend of 20 years. Suddenly, some liberals have discovered a newfound love for extremists who hide behind the cloth to justify their radical views.

He goes on to make this observation:

The double standard some liberals have employed in response to Wright makes one seriously consider their oft-stated preference for rationality, reason and secularism over superstition and prejudice.

This reminds me of a thought I keep having. Many pundits will assume any argument to support their party regardless of the overall consistency of the rhetoric. Thus we have conservatives who staunchly support the idea of staying out of international affairs, until a conservative president goes to war with Iraq. Or we have liberals who staunchly support constitutional rights except for the second one. Its rather alarming when you consider how much of either political party consist of people who seem mostly uninterested in rhetorical continuity.

It leaves one with the cynical, and paradoxical, view that a parties principles are determined solely by the other party’s views. This most obviously is the case when a political position in which the prevailing party lacks public support for a position. In those cases, no matter what underlying principle must be sacrificed the minority party will develop a rhetorical position to tap into that potential majority of voters.

I have posted on political ideology being correlated with happiness. A story in the economist has this to say.

In 2004 Americans who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” were nearly twice as likely to tell pollsters they were “very happy” as those who considered themselves “liberal” or “very liberal” (44% versus 25%). One might think this was because liberals were made wretched by George Bush. But the data show that American conservatives have been consistently happier than liberals for at least 35 years.

Perhaps more interesting though is the explanation one ‘expert’ gives:

Why should this be so? Mr Brooks proposes that whatever their repective merits, the conservative world view is more conducive to happiness than the liberal one (in the American sense of both words). American conservatives tend to believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can succeed. This makes them more optimistic than liberals, more likely to feel in control of their lives and therefore happier. American liberals, at their most pessimistic, stress the injustice of the economic system, the crushing impersonal forces that keep the little guy down and what David Mamet, a playwright, recently summed up as the belief that “everything is always wrong”. Emphasising victimhood was noble during the 1950s and 1960s, says Mr Brooks. By overturning Jim Crow laws, liberals gave the victims of foul injustice greater control over their lives. But in as much as the American left is now a coalition of groups that define themselves as the victims of social and economic forces, and in as much as its leaders encourage people to feel helpless and aggrieved, he thinks they make America a glummer place.

I actually think there is a great deal of merit to this. It seems to me that regardless of humans actually being determined, we have been biologically wired to operate optimally in a free will frame of mind. Those that have experiences that push towards determinism can generate resentment and a general unhappiness. I speak from personal experience in this regard. Having been continually rejected from prestigious graduate programs for a score on a standardized test that I can’t control has made me angry, bitter and unhappy. A large reason for my anger is my perception that I can’t control whether I get into these prestigious programs.

When you consider how other governments and economic systems work it becomes more clear just how important it is to design systems that sync with our biological need to perceive choice. Communism failed because it takes to much perception of volition from it’s people. Socialism’s failures most likely can be traced back to the same problem. Monarchies, despots, oligarchies, they all exceed a threshold in causing it’s people to perceive determinism in the outcome of their actions. Free markets and democracies on the other hand, to the extent that a state entity can facilitate the perception of volition, do the best job of doing so. Democracies give citizen a choice in what kind of laws should be applied to themselves while free markets gives consumers the maximal choice in determining what material things to populate their world with. Such choices bring about perception in volition and in turn allow our biology to run optimally.

I actually think the assertion that the biology of man is performs optimally in a free market democracy is a testable hypothesis. That is to say, one can probably show higher incidents of biological inefficiency in people living in a non-democracy. Along these lines, one could then make an argument that policy which reduces choice and increases determinism leads to institutional operation comes out of sync with our biological makeup. Passing universal health care at the federal level would push the citizenry’s perception of health care outcomes as being even more deterministic. Over time this would breed resentment and unhappiness as people biology operates in efficiently in a overly deterministic system.

Better to minimize federal policy. By its very nature it must violate human biology.

An excellent post at TCS daily makes some interesting points equating the power of super wealthy people and politicians.

Montgomery County, Maryland, has an annual budget of $3.8 billion. This sum is under the control of a County Council with nine members. On an average per-politician basis, each County Council member controls just over $400 million a year in spending.

To put an annual spending figure of $400 million in perspective, consider this: if you had $8 billion in assets and earned 5 percent per year on those assets, that would give you $400 million in annual income. And few Americans have that much. The world’s wealthiest person is Warren Buffett, with $62 billion (admittedly he has often been able to earn more than 5 percent per year from investments). Bill Gates has $58 billion. Fewer than 40 Americans have more than $8 billion in assets, and their names are largely familiar to us–the Waltons of Wal-Mart, Sergie Brin and Larry Page of Google, and so on.

Can you name the members of the County Council in Montgomery County, Maryland? I can’t name very many of them, and I live there. Still, getting elected to the County Council in Montogmery County, which is pretty far down the ladder in terms of political power in the United States, enables you to control more annual spending than the wealth of Donald Trump or Steven Jobs.

At the Federal level, the Budget is $3 trillion. If you divide that by 535 (the number of of Senators and Congressmen), then on average each legislator controls over $5 billion in spending per year. That is more than even the world’s richest person could spend annually.

He goes on to argue that:

Thus, the comparison between legislators and the super-rich is actually quite apt. Both are able to exert an unusually large level of control over which worthy causes receive money. Financially, wealthy people and politicians have the same type of power. The difference is that politicians have much, much more of it, by orders of magnitude.

Making one final point he states:

The monetary comparisons only scratch the surface of the inequality and excesses of political power in the United States. Bill Gates might be said to control as much money as a member of the County Council where I live. But he does not have the power to, say, tell the people of the County where they can and cannot smoke, or to tell local businesses what wages they must pay their workers, or to decide whether a local concert venue will be devoted to folk music or to rock.

This is about right. Politicians that are in control of large budgets have more money to spend on others than any rich person could over possibly hope to spend. Not only do theses politicians have this ridiculous amount of power, they then have power to outright ban and regulate. Politicians have a ridiculous amount of power.

The author of the post argues for fracturing the political landscape as a means of dispersing the power. I think this is a very wise suggestion. The best way to protect a democracy is planting safeguards preventing the excessive consolidation of power. Make it harder to get laws passed.

I would also like to point out, since many of my reader lean left, that many of the income redistribution polices you support are the kinds of polices that give politician more power. If you think its right to forcibly take money from one group of people and place it into the hands of another you must realize you are giving power to a class of people whose job it is to define the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’. In supporting such policy you are supporting the consolidation of power into the political class.

Both in 2000 and the current presidential race we hear rhetoric about uniting the country. As if it’s desirable that their is accordance between politicians. If you ask me such unity is scary and normally leads to policy that further consolidates power into an ever shrinking political class.