Levin vs. Dreher and Frum: Who Ya Got?

The Great One responds to attacks from the pitiful tag team of Crunchy and the Douche (and some other squish I've never heard of).  Care to guess who wins?

(h/t)

Posted by: Sean M. at 02:22 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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CK MacLeod really needs to work on his tone.

Why, it's not that I think he should shut up per se, it's that I think he might offend someone with his non-inclusiveness.  Stalwart Republican thinkers like David Frum, Meggy Mac, and Colin Powell just to name a few.  He needs to learn the base may be important window dressing, but they really aren't thinkers.  Not like us. 

Independents are important.  While they may not care enough to donate to a campaign, volunteer for said campaign, or provide the grassroots infrastructure necessary for a successful campaign, they provide something better: cultural cover.  And by that I mean, they allow us to seem more "cool," as the kiddos say these days.  Individual rights?  Not cool.  Respecting the unborn?  Also not cool.  Expecting our leaders to value philosophy over rhetoric?  The most uncool of all.  Who bases things on a grounding philosophy anymore?  So 18^th century.

We need more leaders like Colin Powell to attract these valuable independents.  Like them, he knows the importance of not really having any grounded principles, voting based on important concerns like skin color or an ability to read pretty words off a teleprompter, and perhaps most crucial, a politician's ability to sound tolerant of other opinions (even if he or she isn't).

I've always longed to be part of a political party that had absolutely no parameters set for inclusion (even supporting said party in presidential races.)  After all, Powell knows best.  Had we listened to him, the GOP would have nominated a moderate to run in 2008, instead of conservative firebrand John McCain. 

Good luck Gen. Powell, and by all means, CK, shut up. 

Posted by: It's Vintage, Duh at 07:39 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I know I'm probably in the minority...

...but I really liked this story, and if there's anyone who needs to hear it, it's the students in DC's public schools.  If only there were some way our President (y'know, the who is for the "little guy") could help raise them out of those schools.  Perhaps a voucher program of some sort.  Oh wait.

Posted by: It's Vintage, Duh at 12:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The liberal Catholic Hucktard Canard

So, we all know Obama did the commencement speech at Notre Dame. Obama, being in favor of abortion and infanticide, met some opposition from Catholics who, for some strange reason, think that Catholic Church doctrine should actually be followed on the issue of life.  The president of Trinity Washington University referred to them this way,

...the president of Trinity Washington University denouncing the "religious vigilantism" of those who opposed Obama's visit and calling their protests "an embarrassment to all Catholics."

She continues,

"The real scandal at Notre Dame today is not that the president of the United States is speaking at commencement," McGuire said. "The real scandal is the misappropriation of sacred teachings for political ends. The real scandal is the spectacle of ostensibly Catholic mobs camping out at Notre Dame for the specific purpose of disrupting the commencement address of the nation's first African American president. This ugly spectacle is an embarrassment to all Catholics. The face that Catholicism shows to our new president should be one marked with the sign of peace, not distorted in the snarl of hatred."

What does the race of the president have to do with pro-life demonstrations?  Why did the president of Trinity feel the need to make note of Obama's race?   We know why, of course, to tar their opposition as racists and to try and scare them into silence and compliance. 

McGuire continued, "The religious vigilantism apparent in the Notre Dame controversy arises from organizations that have no official standing with the church, but who are successful in gaining media coverage as if they were speaking for Catholicism. . . . They have established themselves as uber-guardians of a belief system we can hardly recognize. Theirs is a narrow faith devoted almost exclusively to one issue. They defend the rights of the unborn but have no charity toward the living. They mock social justice as a liberal mythology."

And here be what I'm calling the Hucktard Canard.  We've seen Mike Huckabee regularly deploy a similar argument against small government acivists, that if the government doesn't offer up a large number of social programs, people will starve in the streets.  It's bullshit of course, and we all know that.  Small government conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians don't mock social justice as a liberal mythology, they mock the incredibly stupid idea that social justice can only be achieved through government force. 

Liberal Catholics buy into this bullshit, lock, stock and barrel.  Even the Vatican, to its own detriment seems to favor the Eurosocialist approach, as it won't come out and endorse capitalism.  These people seem to think that if the government isn't doling out aid to people in its inefficient and corrupt way (not to mention the forceful seizing of funds from other citizens in order to do this), that the vacuum will remain unfilled, and people will go hungry, homeless and naked. 

It just isn't so, nature abhors a vacuum, and inevitably churches, non-profit organizations and individuals would move in to help as needed, and they often outperform the government, in both services delivered and efficiency, and it's all done on a volunteer basis.  People chose to help, as opposed to making the right decision with the threat of government power being held over them. 

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 12:07 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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No, becoming like the UK's Conservative Party is pretty much the last thing we need

Britain has become a statist hellhole, in large part because the Conservative Party's equivalent of the RINO permanently took over the party apparatus from the Thatcherites, and offered no clear opposition, they were and are Diet Labour.  As a result, Labour pretty much owns the UK, their policies have nearly destroyed the nation.  From here it looks like the Tories are barely going to put up opposition to it, they aren't applying the brakes, they're letting it coast a bit.  No thanks.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 09:34 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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More than pretty pictures and fancy buzzwords

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a new watchdog site is more substantial than 'protecting the vulnerable'.

From TechRepublican's blog:

At today’s Conservative Blogger’s Briefing, hosted by Robert Bluey at the Heritage Foundation, Onvia CEO Mike Pickett and CTO Eric Gillespie spoke about their project, Recovery.org – a new website designed to track where YOUR taxpayer money is going.

Recovery.org is a technological solution to government transparency that is doing exactly what the White House intended to do already, but hasn’t yet done with Recovery.gov.

Recovery.org has a nice breakdown of stimulus spending by state, county, and city.  And how they managed to get that domain, I don't know - I'm guessing it cost a pretty penny.

Posted by: Alice H at 08:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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