Links and remarks

• The presidency vs. civil liberties. Of course a foreign (in this case British) site covers this. Mark Shea: Our post-9/11 ruling class: ...working together to destroy your liberty while scaring you about the bogeyman. You can jigger Americans into buying almost any intrusion on their rights and privacy–up to and including handing the Tyrant-in-Chief the power to torture, indefinitely jail and murder you on a whim–just so long as you tell people it’s to defeat “terror”. And the beauty of it for our Ruling Class? It will never, ever, end. Until we wise up. Why keep choosing between tyrants? Stay home, vote for Johnson or write in Paul.
• From Roissy: the sexual market and society. Long, good post that covers his worldview.
• From LRC: Laurence Vance’s list of political beliefs. I’m pro-military so, among other reasons, I’m against its abuse and thus anti-war.
• From RR: vulture capitalism and the presidency. Perhaps the government could use a vulture capitalist/management consultant at the helm. That he was a vulture capitalist is one of the better marks on Mitt Romney’s record. Because of other aspects of Romney’s record, and because of some of his promises, this article is not an endorsement. I leave it up to you the reader to weighh all the factors. Here, I merely wish to point out that which is often described as a negative could be a positive.
• The reason so many billions of dollars is spent on advertising on common products is because there really isn’t much difference between the brands (of the same price), and thus what brand one buys is mostly dependent on the advertising (including the packaging). ... Which clearly leads to the real reason so many hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on the presidential elections — because the two candidates are so similar. Some people think that’s a feature not a bug, that it keeps the country stable.
• A lesson from Sandy that’ll probably go unlearned. Like with the great Philadelphia thunderstorm of June 2010 (real damage and power out for days), it’s a dress rehearsal for economic collapse. You can’t expect the government to save you.