Once again, the Crunchy Cons are driving me crazy with their statements. It’s not Cap’n Crunch today, it’s one of his Crunchy Compatriots. Caleb Stegall says:

conservative leaders and spokesmen ought to be saying loud and often that with a few exceptions, anyone who would place an infant in daycare is a negligent parent and a negligent citizen. A few will, but most won’t for fear of offending too many constituents and of all the Jim Geraghty’s of the world calling them a killjoy.

This line of thinking just befuddles me. The CrunchyCons are trying to win friends and influence people to their way of thinking, right? And they think the best way to do that is to inform a mother who works that she is being a negligent parent?

The other problem with this argument is its loophole. I could inform Caleb about my wife putting herself through college while raising a young child, and having to put that child in daycare, but he’d just let himself off the hook with a “ah, I said in most cases it’s negligence” response. By not detailing in what circumstances he views this to be acceptable, he gives himself an out to any criticism someone might come up with.

Again, keep in mind that in the CrunchyCon world, “choice” and “freedom” are bad things. So in the CrunchyCon world, it would be up to the CrunchyCons to decide when women get to work outside the home, and when they stay at home to raise the kids.

What’s funny is I’ve seen it both ways. Andrew was in daycare from the time he was three months old. But Elaine has stayed home with the twins since they were born. As far as I can tell, Andrew’s turned out pretty darn well. So has Mallory, who’s getting straight “A”’s in college after a) going to daycare and b) going to public school.

I’ve probably devoted more time and energy to the CrunchyCon argument than it deserves. It is, after all, not a serious political philosophy. Rod Dreher even says so, calling it instead a “sensibility”. I’m pretty sure that means this is meant as advice to live by. Which is fine and all, until you get back to their idea that “freedom” and “choice” are bad things, and that we should all live as they live. Even Dear Abby doesn’t go that far.

**Update**

Now Caleb insinuates conservatives aren’t really conservative if they won’t declare “with a few exceptions, anyone who would place an infant in daycare is a negligent parent and a negligent citizen”.

See the strawman in this argument? Caleb says if you won’t stand up and say this, you’re not a conservative. But why is he the arbiter of conservatism?

Again, Caleb gives himself the out of “with a few exceptions”… which is really amusing, since I know any argument I (or Jim) would make would only be met with “well, see, that’s one of the exceptions I was talking about”.

So I won’t say what Caleb wants us to say. I won’t say putting your kid in daycare makes you a negligent parent. Because I don’t think it’s true. My daughter Mallory was in daycare while my wife went to college. She’s now an honors student in college. My son Andrew went to daycare. He had mastered the benchmarks for kindergarten four months into the school year.

Negligent parents leave their children in soiled diapers for days while they take off to Vegas. Negligent parents don’t monitor what their children are doing online, or what shows they’re watching or what music they’re listening to. Negligent parents can be found in a Kansas farmhouse as easily as they can be found in a corporate office.

Caleb also says:

Any intrusion into or critique of real life decisions people make is out of bounds as a matter of course. It used to be that taking conservatism seriously required talking and thinking about these things. But liberal-conservatives want “family” and “loyalty” and “duty” to be pious puffs of smoke. Good for a few votes in flyover country and then quick! hoist up the no-social-judgment zone around their “private lives.” Can’t you hear the echoes of the gay rights and abortion lobbies in Geraghty’s remarks.

I’m sorry, but I call shenanigans (an evil “South Park” reference) on this. “Liberal-conservatives”? You mean “conservatives who don’t agree with me”. Well, that’d be me. And I don’t see family, loyalty, and duty to be pious puffs of smoke. In fact, that’s part of the reason I’m so annoyed by this whole argument. My loyalty to my family, my wife, my children all demand that I stand up and shout down this ignorant claptrap about “negligent parents are the ones who send their children to daycare”. As for the “no-social-judgement zone”… there’s a difference between saying “well, I wouldn’t raise my kids that way” and “YOU ARE A BAD PARENT FOR SENDING YOUR CHILD TO DAYCARE!!!” It’s all in the tone. This holier-than-thou business (and yes, I do mean that literally) that the CrunchyCons have adopted will earn them no converts. I guess I’m not in the business of telling other people how to live their lives because I don’t know everything there is to know about parenting, and something tells me Caleb doesn’t either.

My kids have both gone to daycare, and been raised by a stay-at-home mom. Neither one made my wife or me negligent parents. I’m proud of the way my wife raised the two oldest kids before I was around, and I’m proud of the way we’re bringing up the youngest three. If that means I’m not conservative in Caleb’s eyes, so be it. Because he’s damn sure not one in mine.

Yes, I’ll admit it. Playhouse Disney is a fixture in our house in the mornings. James loves “Little Einsteins” and would watch it for hours straight if we let him.

Anyway, before “Little Einsteins” comes on, there’s a show called “Higglytown Heroes”. It’s a bizarre show about this universe in which everybody is a matrioshka nesting doll. Every episode the little kids who star in the show run into a problem, and need to rely on the help of a “hero” to save the day. Firefighters, EMT’s, coaches, doctors, and bankers have all been heroes. Today’s “hero” takes the cake, however.

Today’s hero was an “environmentalist” who saved ducks from being covered in oil. Why were the ducks covered in oil? Because apparently every stinking motorboat in Higglytown is leaking oil like the Exxon Valdez.

I’m still waiting for the Higglytown Hunter to be a hero.

“24: The Game”. Cool.

I’ve been following the discussion over at the Crunchy Con blog with a sort of morbid fascination. The blog is there to expound upon themes in Rod Dreher’s new book (also called “Crunchy Cons”, with the world’s longest sub-title).

From what I’ve been able to gather, Crunchy Cons are granola-eatin’, environment-lovin’, home-schoolin’, church-goin’, pop culture-rejectin’, morality-preachin’ Amish.

Take this post for example:

It is truly strange when people like Wendell Berry — and others, consider the case of Dorothy Day described by Lukacs below — are ascribed to the left by our schizophrenic political taxonomers. People who are rooted by a love of the permanent things; who are loyal above all to the tradition and membership of their “little platoons;” people who are willing to defend what they love from encroaching destruction via spaghetti-interchanges, foreign entanglements, mega-corporations, technological developments, mass media, etc., all of which are designed to take their local capital — intellectual capital, social capital, fiscal capital, cultural and agricultural capital, and most especially, generational capital in the form of their children — as far away from home as fast as possible.

Now, if you can even decipher what the heck is being said here, more power to you. What I take it to mean is that even something as benign as the interstates are designed to remove the local capital away from us.

But what the Crunchy Cons forget is what we get in return. Yes, the wheat in Kansas gets shipped to New York. But the Birkenstocks made in Germany get shipped to Kansas so Crunchy Cons can wear them. The same holds true for intellectual capital. If mass media and mega-corporations are such a bad thing, Rod might want to rethink his strategy of having Crown Forum publish his book. In fact, he might want to rethink working for the Dallas Morning News. (yes, I know, the quote doesn’t come from Rod, but from one of his Crunchy Compatriots).

The idea of Crunchy Conservatism is bizarre to me. I’m a practical conservative. I don’t read conservative philosophers, much less spend a lot of time thinking about Burke vs. Berry. Hell, I don’t even know if that last sentence makes sense. For all I know, there IS no difference between Burke and Berry.

I believe in less government, less taxes, and more freedom. That’s my bottom line. Let me quote Rod in his book:

The problem with too many of us conservatives is we think holding the politically correct (from a right-wing point of view) position, and faithfully voting Republican, is enough to guarantee our conservative bona fides. We talk the talk, but do we walk the walk? Not if we’re consumerists first, and conservatives second. The two cannot be reconciled.
…
Consumerism fetishizes individual choice, and sees its expansion as unambiguous progress. A culture guided by consumerist values is one that welcomes technology without question, and prizes efficiency. A consumerist culture also tends to cede authority to the secular priesthood of scientists and other professional experts. Its idea of liberty involves the steady increase of the individual’s sovereignty (the choice thing again). A consumerist society encourages its members both to find and express their personal indentity through the consumption of products. Its ultimate goal is the spread of happiness and well-being through the improvement of material conditions, and the creation and general increase of wealth.

And if moral and spiritual values get in the way of that, well, hey babe, you can’t stop progress.

How can you be a traditional-values conservative in a society whose very economic structure is designed to separate you, your kids, and your community from those values, and each other? That is the question at the heart of this book.

Any philosophy that argues freedom isn’t a good thing is a) not really my idea of conservatism and b) not something I’ll be signing on to at any point in the near future.

Rasmussen has a new poll out, showing when it comes to national security, Americans trust congressional Democrats more than President Bush (43% to 41% respectively). The 2% advantage is within the margin of error (+/- 4%), but it’s alarming news for Bushie nonetheless. Supporters of the President can’t spin this poll as bad sampling or biased questions. The poll is entirely on the up and up.

There is one oddity in the poll results that seems to stand out for me:

Seventy-two percent (72%) of Americans say they have been following news about the Dubai Ports deal somewhat or very closely.

If 61% of respondents don’t know who currently operates the ports, how closely can they be following the issue? Bushie and his militant supporters may be able to use it to blow off this poll, but I think that would be a big mistake. Bushie has a real problem here. And I lay the blame entirely at his feet.

His administration was unprepared for the pushback on this port deal. That’s the second time they’ve made that mistake, and I have to wonder what’s going on there? Only thing I keep going back to is the administration assuming that Bush supporters would make the case for him, instead of making the case himself. And that’s just lazy PR.

When Bushie, the Evil Karl Rove and the rest of the staff sit down to discuss what happened in this poll, I hope someone has the guts to bring up how poorly PR for this issue has been handled by this administration. I can tell you I’m not optimistic.

Peggy Noonan has an interesting point of view on the port debate…

So we’re all talking about port security this week, and the debate over the Bush administration decision to allow an United Arab Emirates company to manage six ports in the United States. That debate is turning bitter, and I wonder if the backlash against President Bush isn’t partly due to the fact that everyone in America has witnessed or has been a victim of the incompetence of the airport security system. Why would people assume the government knows what it’s doing when it makes decisions about the ports? It doesn’t know what it’s doing at the airports.

Peggy, as always, makes an excellent point.

Over at the new Crunchy Con blog, Rod Dreher (otherwise known as Cap’n Crunch ™ ) and his band of Birkenstocked brigands are making some pretty bizarre arguments. Like this one, for example:

We have all been paying lip service, of one kind or another, to the virtues of sacrifice, self-discipline, putting others before oneself, etc. However, I notice that there is the tendency, always, of always adding the caveats: “If I want to” and “If I have the economic freedom to do so.” This, frankly, is the language of choice; the language of liberalism. It reveals something important to note that even when self-described crunchy cons or their fellow travelers get together, they (we) cannot wholly avoid speaking in the language of liberalism. The effect of this is to undermine any gain in cultural or spiritual order that Rod’s prescriptions might otherwise offer.

So lemme get this straight. The concept of choice is a liberal concept? Gee, think the abortion issue has hijacked a word?

Choice is freedom (and in the religious context, choice is free will). Conservatives are (or should be) the party of limited government, the party of individual responsibility, the party of personal freedom. If crunchy conservatism doesn’t value personal freedom, then I think it needs a new label. Got any ideas?

By the way, I can’t wait to read more of Jonah Goldberg’s thoughts on the book. His first salvo is here.

My first response after reading all the discussion on the ports issue over at On Tap is - what’s the big deal? Why is everyone up in arms over this? Marshall, in my opinion makes the most important point when he said (’bout halfway down the post)

Your second point is, I think, the most compelling. But let’s remember a practical fact — it’s not like Dubai Ports (that’s the company) is going to send thousands of employees over here to manage the ports. The actual work will still be done by the same Americans who have been doing it for years. To be sure, there will be a few actual Arabs (gasp!) running around. But presumablky, if they’re going to be exposed to anything secret, they’d have to go through the same background check and security clearance process that everyone else does.

The only thing changing is the name of the corporation paying the dock workers. So what’s the big deal?

Yes, ‘Homeland Security’ is important to me - but I live in a border state. In my opinion, the hundreds of unknown people crossing into this country illegally every day are more of a threat to our security than the nationality of the corporation running the ports. I just can’t get worked up over this. And I don’t trust the Democrats, and even some of the Republicans voicing concern over this. These same folks are so concerned about the security of this country that you see them standing side by side with the Minute Men down at the border right? They’re fighting for tighter border security right? Oh, wait.

Anyway, I can’t help but think there’s more going on with this deal than we’re being told. Take a look at this map:

This is pure speculation on my part, but UAE is rather strategically placed if the US ever needs to strike Iran. Is it outside the realm of possibility the US is trying to keep UAE in its good graces by greasing this deal through, thereby keeping open the possibility of using UAE military bases to attack Iran (if necessary)?

Thoughts?

Is going on over at On Tap. Feel free to chime in.

Do as I say, not as I do.

I think that’s McCain’s new campaign motto. Since I’ve expressed irritation with my favorite Arizona Senator, it’s only fair that I do so with my least favorite Arizona Senator, the maverick Republican Senator John McCain.

Long portrayed as a Pork Slayer, Senator McCain has a pet pork project of his own.

The bill would direct $2 million annually over five years to establish a center at a specified law school to honor a renowned jurist from the state.
…
Mr. McCain’s efforts to win money to establish the William H. Rehnquist Center on Constitutional Structures and Judicial Independence at the University of Arizona illustrates the pervasive push in Congress for money to send back home, as well as the struggle to pin down exactly what constitutes an earmark to be covered under the new rules.

No! Say it isn’t so! Pork Slayer actually has pork of his own? How can that be?!?!

Actually it’s not surprising at all. McCain’s a politician, just like all the rest. He has to bring home the bacon so his constituents can fry it up in a pan.

What I find surprising is that he thinks a law school that received a $115 million donation in 1999 needs $10 million from Joe B. Taxpayer to start this center. Surely they didn’t spend all that money already.

(via The Club for Growth)

Yahoo! bans usernames with “Allah” but not any other religous figures?

My favorite Arizona Senator, Jon Kyl is co-sponsoring a bill that would make tunneling under the border illegal.

On Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., plans to introduce a bill that will spell out, specifically, that such burrowing is a federal offense in this era of heightened border security and terrorism concerns.

Her bill, which Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., is co-sponsoring, is to be unveiled at a news conference at the warehouse near the Otay Mesa port of entry in Southern California, where authorities in January uncovered a tunnel from Tijuana.

And this does what, exactly? Sneaking into this country illegally is already a crime, so what does one more law do to stop it? Not a darn thing as far as I can tell.

Oh yeah, both Feinstein and Kyl are up for re-election this year. This law makes them look tough on illegal immigration without actually having to do anything about the problem.

Nothing really grabbing me enough to devote a whole post to it, so I thought I’d throw out a few odds and ends.

Curt Gowdy has passed away at 86. I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Gowdy a few years ago when I was doing a radio documentary on baseball in Oklahoma City. I still have a 1947 recording of him calling an Oklahoma City Indians game. What a great broadcaster.

The food police are going overboard. Check out the comments about this box of candy at Amazon.com. “Not appropriate for children”? Because it has candy cigarettes? Look, I ate candy cigarettes as a kid and I… well, okay, I’m a bad example. But just because you eat a candy cigarette doesn’t mean you’re going to grow up to be a smoker.

The SF Chronicle has a good followup on Patrick McCullough, the Oakland homeowner who wanted to make his neighborhood a safer place. You can find the story here.

Sorry for the light blogging (I’ve been reading Stephen King’s latest… thoughts after I finish). I had an interesting email today and wanted to get your take on it.

What are you supposed to do when you have a close friend that is a “moonbat”… I’ve had a buddy that I have known for years we were each others best man god fathers for our children all that stuff… Yet he feels the need to forward as much Bush/Republican bashing email crap he can find to me… I feel required to reply which I do and usually step it up a notch by replying to all so all the other “moonbats” that he has send his crap to get an earful as well…

We all have people in our lives that feel differently than we do about politics. I’m sort of the black sheep of the family, actually. My sister is a conservative, but that’s about it. Still, I wouldn’t label my family “moonbats” (although I was a little worried when I saw the Michael Moore book at my mom’s house). For the most part, we simply avoid talking politics. I’m always open to suggestions, however. How do you handle the “moonbats” in your life?

My buddy Tim Graham actually has a column on the CBS News blog. You can read it here. A preview:

Personally, I’m amazed that liberals think they have the more idealistic position on media bias. The conservative position is for fairness and balance and debate, for each side getting a say. You can argue that conservatives are merely tugging the media rightward in their nefarious demands for balance, but the location of these poles demonstrates convincingly that the media today is not on the right, but located noticeably to the left of the Squishiest Middle and somewhere to the right of the rarefied radical air around Ramsey Clark.

It’s good stuff.

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Apparently now horse racing is cruel.

I don’t think she’ll be missed quite as much as the article implies.

….truly is a bitch

Lafayette resident Josh Kayser chuckled Monday afternoon when he read about Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shooting a friend during a quail hunt over the weekend.

A few hours later, paramedics rushed Kayser, 21, to the hospital after his girlfriend accidentally shot him while they were trailing a raccoon.

“I read that thing about the vice president and said to myself ‘How can you shoot your friend with your gun?’ And look what happened,” he said Tuesday.

I bet they had a wonderful Valentine’s Day.

An absolutely disgraceful display of political correctness at the University of Washington. A member of the student senate wanted to honor alumni “Pappy” Boyington for his service to this country. The debate that followed makes me wonder what my children will say when they head off to college.

A couple of highlights:

Jill Edwards questioned whether it was appropriate to honor a person
who killed other people.
She said she didn’t’ believe a member of the Marine Corps was an
example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce.

I would prefer UW turn out Marines than people like Jill Edwards, personally.

Ashley Miller commented that many monuments at UW already
commemorate rich white men.

Pappy Boyington grew up in a blue collar family. And he was part Sioux. But thanks for playing “Blame the White Guy” Ashley.

Deidre Lockman moved to strike the quote from President Roosevelt.
Seconded. Objection.
She said the resolution focused more heavily on the negative aspects of
war and should instead focus on more positive aspects such as the
awarding of the Medal of Honor.

And why was Pappy Boyington awarded the Medal of Honor? From Medalofhonor.com:

“for extraordinary heroism above and beyond the call of duty” while in command of a Marine Fighting Squadron in the Central Solomons Area from 12 September 1943 to 3 January 1944.”

That heroism included shooting down (at one point) 14 fighters in 32 days. Here’s an example of his bravery.

Typical of Major Boyington’s daring feats is his attack on Kahili airdome at the southern tip of Bougainville on 17 October 1943. He and 24 fighters circled the field persistently where 60 hostile aircraft were grounded, goading the enemy into sending up a large numerically superior force. In the fierce battle that followed, 20 of the enemy planes were shot out of the skies. The Black Sheep roared back to their base without the loss of a single ship.

One more comments from the students at UW.

Mikhail Smirnoff said he supported the resolution. He said the resolution
does not support a final product, but that it only supports the concept of
the monument. He said he understood the sentiment of not wanting to
reward those who fought in the war, but that he thought those who fought
in WWII were heros and that it was a much different war than the
controversial war in Iraq.

This, by the way, came from a guy who appeared to support the proposal. How do you “understand not wanting to reward those” who fought in WWII?

Maybe I’m taking this too personally. After all, my dad’s a WWII vet. But this isn’t a lack of knowing history we’re talking about. This is a callous disregard for anyone who wears the uniform. This is wrong.

The Jawa Report has a response from the student senate president. Here’s a portion:

The blog news and the draft minutes that were posted are inaccurate. First, Ashley Miller’s statements were highlighting, as a point of information, that the majority of our statues are white males, which was an issue previously addressed last year, this is not in any way meant to go against Colonel Boyington. It was noted by the sponsor, Andrew Everett, about Boyington’s heritage later. Jill Edwards made here statements as an individual, and it should not be assumed she speaks for all students. Karl Smith wanted to honor his service as a whole (he risked his life, endured 20 months in a POW Camp) in an effort to bring more support from a number of students who do not morally agree with war. These statements are in public discourse that has been and will always be at the University of Washington to educate on the questions and issues of our society.

So one student was just making a general comment about too many statues of rich, white guys? She wasn’t referring to Boyington? Coulda fooled me. I love the defense of Jill Edwards: well, she was only speaking for herself. Right. Gotcha. And Karl Smith just wanted to talk about Boyington being a POW so people who “oppose war” would get on board.

You know, I don’t think I’d like the support of people who would have preferred we not fight in WWII. What’s next? A formal apology from UW students to the governments of Japan and Germany?

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I want this car, although I have a feeling it wouldn’t be quite a good a stunt vehicle as the original General Lee. You don’t see Geo Metros get airborne too often.

The heart symbol is really a representation of the female buttocks? I had no idea. Kinda makes the whole heart shaped box of chocolates seem a little juvenile and gross though, doesn’t it?

The White House press corps is at it again, most notably David Gregory (looking oh-so-dapper in his pink shirt). They’re once again grilling Scott McClellan about the Vice President’s hunting accident, wondering why it was that 14 hours elapsed before they learned about the incident.

At the same time, I’m wondering why it’s been two weeks and the media still won’t show us the cartoons. I wonder if they’ll even talk about this on the evening news tonight.

The outrage by Gregory and others is bordering on hysteria. They’re upset not because they didn’t learn about the hunting accident moments after it happened, but because it was a local paper in Corpus Christi who got the story first (in my opinion). This is a tempest in a teapot.

Steve, posting in Iraq (glad to see you’re safe) says if this had happened to Gore we would be demanding explanations. I don’t think so. I think we’d be poking fun at Gore (much like people are poking fun at Cheney), but I don’t think we’d be asking if he was going to resign or wondering about some weird sort of coverup. I might have even suggested that Gore held off on reporting the news until it was after the Sunday morning news cycle… but then again, I suggested that about this incident as well.

We have Iran threatening to blow Israel off the map, we have riots in Pakistan over a bunch of cartoons, we have Al Gore bashing America while in Saudi Arabia, we have misuse of taxpayer funds given to Katrina victims, and the White House press corps thinks the top story is a 14 hour delay in telling them about a hunting accident??? And they wonder why so many of us think they’re irrelevant.

Jim reports on a new commercial for Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and his new book “Crashing the Gate”.

The concept — there will be a donkey laying on the ground. There will be a long line of people tugging at the donkey with a rope, trying to get it to move. The donkey won’t budge. Some dude (they’re threatening to make me do it) will walk down the line up to the donkey, give the animal a look, and then give it a swift kick in the ass to get it moving. (And no, the donkey won’t really be kicked.)

Hmmm… simulated cruelty to animals. Is this a part of the Kos Krusade?

It seems like one of those odd hypothetical arguments: “Who would win in a fight, Batman or Al Queda?” Frank Miller (of “Sin City” fame) knows the answer:

Miller proudly announced the title of his next Batman book, which he will write, draw and ink. Holy Terror, Batman! is no joke. And Miller doesn’t hold back on the true purpose of the book, calling it “a piece of propoganda,” where ‘Batman kicks al Qaeda’s ass.”

The reason for this work, Miller said, was “an explosion from my gut reaction of what’s happening now.” He can’t stand entertainers who lack the moxie of their ’40s counterparts who stood up to Hitler. Holy Terror is “a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we’re up against.”

It’s been a long time since heroes were used in comics as pure propaganda. As Miller reminded, “Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That’s one of the things they’re there for.”

“These are our folk heroes,” Miller said. “It just seems silly to chase around the Riddler when you’ve got Al Qaeda out there.”

Should be interesting. I liked Miller’s “Dark Knight” graphic novel, and I while I never read the “Sin City” series, I thought the movie was oddly beautiful. This looks worth picking up, anyway.

Hurricane Katrina relief funds were misused (read: fraud) or wasted by government relief agencies and aid recipients. Some of my favorite uses of those $2,000 debit cards:

In other instances, recipients improperly used their debit cards intended for food and shelter for $400 massages, a $450 tattoo, a $1,100 diamond engagement ring and $150 worth of products at “Condoms to Go.”

A $400 massage? Um, I’m a regular visitor to day spas and none of my massages cost that much. I’m pretty naive to the seedy side of the massage business, but I’m guessing that “victim” got more than a massage. I can only assume the $150 spent at Condoms to Go were for the massages..