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Proof that the undead comic could be very amusing, once upon a time.

A conservative Republican finally begins to grasp what I’ve been telling them since 2001:

It is our responsibility, as conservatives, to never let the Delays, Hasterts, Doles, etc. lead our party again. We must demand accountability and conservative principles. We can disagree on a number of issues, but we must never let those who believe that government can spend the money better than those who make the money, ever in power in our party again.

I have always believed that half a loaf (Dole, McCain, etc.) was better than no loaf at all. Now I have changed my mind. What good has been President Bush’s agreeing to No Child Left Behind with Sen. Kennedy? Or Sen. McCain’s to McCain Feingold? Or Sen. McCain’s to McCain/Kennedy on immigration?

The Republican Party of John McCain has no raison d’etre. There is no need for it whatsoever, as evidenced by the fact that even a wildly unelectable Democratic candidate like Barack Obama can run a completely incompetent campaign and still be in a position to beat it.

I’m not convinced that McCain is quite as doomed as many despairing Republican pundits assume, since thanks to Obama’s incompetence, the polls remain well within the range of the pro-Democrat fudge factor, but I am convinced that there is nothing positive to be gained from a McCain victory. As I wrote a few days ago, I prefer open and avowed socialism to the sort that comes in a faux conservative guise.

It’s not me, according to the 25-question economics quiz given at the Mises Institute. I only scored 96/100. However, I must say that I take serious exception to what is given as the Austrian position on a particular question; to be more precise, I assert that the official Mises Institute position on the subject is incorrect both empirically and in light of properly applied Austrian logic.

So, let me know how you did and bonus credit for anyone who can identify the question to which I am referring and explain why I would take exception to the official “Austrian” position on the matter. If you don’t understand a question, then simply skip it and go on, as the score awarded is cumulative and is less indicative of ideological identification than of a basic understanding of Austrian economics.

I will not be watching, of course, but if anyone who is wishes to live-comment the debate for everyone’s benefit, feel free to do so here.

UPDATE- It looks as if McCain just sealed the deal for President Obama. One would think that after nearly getting knocked out of the nomination battle due to his determination to cling to the unpopular immigration amnesty, he would not have been so foolish as to support the incredibly unpopular Wall Street bail-out. Apparently, since that much-hated plan looks like it is failing, McCain decided to prevent every economic conservative from voting for him by upping the socialist ante yet again.

“You know that home values of retirees continues to decline and people are no longer able to afford their mortgage payments. As president of the United States, Alan, I would order the secretary of the treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes — at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those — be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

Is it expensive? Yes. But we all know, my friends, until we stabilize home values in America, we’re never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy. And we’ve got to give some trust and confidence back to America.”

If you call yourself a conservative and you vote for McCain, you should be aware of two things. First, you are not a conservative. Second, you are an idiot. As I wrote on Monday, only a vote for McCain is a wasted vote because it’s the only vote that will not provide you what you think you’re going to get. The left-liberal votes for Obama and knows he’ll get socialism and multi-culturalism in one way or another. (The pacifist, on the other hand, will be disappointed.) The third-party voter votes third party and knows he’ll get nothing. The non-voter doesn’t vote and doesn’t get what he isn’t expecting.

The Republican voter, on the other hand, usually votes for conservatism, constitutional judges and small government, but only gets liberalism, activist judges and big government. That’s why it is the Republican vote that is truly the wasted one.

Recent events have allowed the OC to make the final determination about the fate of Minneapolis:

I think the question of whether Minneapolis in 2016 will look more like Mexico City or Mogadishu has been settled.

“Corsi was set to show Obama and Odinga have been in direct contact since the senator’s visit to Kenya in 2006. He was to claim Obama advised Odinga on campaign strategy and helped him raise money in the U.S. for the Kenya presidential campaign.

“Corsi was to report Odinga’s 2007 presidential campaign strategy called for exploiting anti-Kikuyu tribal sentiments, claiming victory and charging voter fraud even if the campaign knew the election had been legitimately lost. Odinga, Corsi said, also was willing to fan the flames of ethnic tribal tensions and use violence as a last resort by calling for mass action that led to the destruction of properties, injuries, loss of life and the displacement of over 500,000 Kenyans. The purpose was to compel the Electoral Commission of Kenya to declare him the winner or enable him to declare himself the winner by force.”

Mogadishu, definitely.

Given the recent arrest of the guy who owned Fingerhut and Sun Country and the recent bankruptcy of the latter, I wonder how many corporations will elect to remain in the People’s Republic of Minnesota now that it’s become clear that it is open season on anyone with assets worth seizing. My question is this: if it is against the law to run a Ponzi scheme, then why aren’t President Bush and Ben Bernanke being arrested?

FDR showed the way:

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

This is interesting news that happens to be highly relevant, as Voxiversity II is going to be reading and discussing Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression. We’ll start the readings on Monday the 27th, but if you want to get an early jump you can download the entire book on PDF or bookmark the online text at the Mises Institute. However, Voxiversity I participants tended to find having the physical text on hand to be helpful, so you may wish to consider ordering the book from the Mises bookstore.

Full disclosure: I have no connection with the Mises Institute, they do not provide me with their literature, and I make nothing from their book sales.

Courtesy of the Responsible Puppet:

The Author of this book has already explained that he is not overly fond of being compared to Tolkien, thinking himself and his writings not up to the comparison, but I will begin this book review with the one criticism of the “Lord of the Rings” that Tolkien admitted to agreeing with in the forward: The book is too short. This is my biggest (and perhaps only) serious criticism…. Beale has implied that he isn’t planning on publishing any extensions to the world he had created here. Too bad, because my feeling here (getting back to Tolkien) is that this book could be a “The Hobbit”-like prelude to a much more significant fictional writing. This is no slight, because I really liked Hobbit. And I really liked this one, as well.

Just to set things straight, I probably will write something set in the world of Summa Elvetica in the future. I just don’t think it will be the next book I write. But I could be wrong, since I didn’t think SE was a book that was ever going to get written in the first place.

But thanks to Marcher Lord Press, it was, and you can buy it here if it sounds of interest to you.

Now that the novel is done and out, it’s time to leap into another Voxiversity. A warning: the book I presently have in mind will be even more brutal than Thucydides, so unless you’re ready to seriously dive into it, you may as well not even start.

I’m curious, however, to know what potential subject is of most interest to people intending to participate in Voxiversity II. Is it history, economics, politics, religion, war, or something else?

JS still isn’t convinced that government shouldn’t attempt to legislate away the business cycle:

I come at this as a liberal Democrat, so full disclosure right away. But let me ask you if you have considered that Ayn Rand style-libertarian economic policies have their limits as well. “Free markets” work in theory efficiently when every participant in the market has the same bargaining power and the same access to information. In the real world, that is never true. Oligarchs will always be oligarchs, whether that involves use of goverment pressure to exert their power or economic pressure and access (through superior funds) to better information to exert their power. But more importantly, psychology and groupthink work their way into markets, even markets as transparent as the stock exchange, but certainly in less transparent markets like real estate. Bubbles are a recurring theme in free markets, and when they pop, things go badly for people who were simply doing what 6 months ago was brilliant. And as we have seen several times (in the 1930’s and now today) a popping bubble can cascade through many sectors of the economy and cause an overall crash that crushes real business activity. In the long run, of course, the economy rebounds, but that’s little comfort for people in bread lines who in the 30’s tended to become interested in totalitarians of the left and the right, and so I think a legitimate societal interest would be in putting shock absorbers in the system so that downturns don’t become another depression. We can argue whether this or that policy will accomplish that task, but I think arguing that complete free markets is the way to go is as utopian as the communists’ worker’s paradise claims of most of the 20th Century.

I find it amazing, if entirely unsurprising, that the first reaction of many people to an economic crisis caused entirely by government intervention is… to express the same sort of doubts about the free market that originally justified the aforementioned government intervention.

JS clearly doesn’t understand what the point of the free market is… but I’ll explain that later today.

So does this reader of Rod Dreher’s. And he’s not the first Minnesotan from whom I’ve heard that had been planning to vote Republican this fall and has now changed his mind:

I was committed to the GOP ticket, supported McCain/Palin and Coleman financially. I live in Minnesota and can hardly bear the thought of Senator Franken. But I have decided NO major party candidates will get my vote. My Senators and Rep all voted yes. I have emailed and called each before and after the vote demanding detailed information on when they read this 451 page atrocity, and why it was neccesary to include the crap that it did. I told the people that answered the phone I expected a letter in response with detailed answers.

They hung up on me or just said they would pass the message on. Your elected officials, in most cases, are so afraid of what they have created they will do anything they are told to try and avoid the unavoidable consequences of the circumstances they have created.

I am more willing to suffer a President Obama and a Senator Franken that I am to support GOP candidates who advocated and voted for this bailout.

I find it incredibly humorous that Al Franken may win a Senate seat solely because Norm Coleman was dumb enough to set himself against the most vehement outpouring of public opinion since the Republican attempt to give migration amnesty. One benefit of this bailout is that it has ended “the lesser evil” argument once and for all.