Seven things that probably you may not know about me

Ow! Tagg'd!!! And also STTPYMNKAM is presently a Google whack.

Much as I hate anything chainletterary, this one's got too many hackers onboard to just ignore.

1. My full name is, sorta, Matthew Wayne Ignatius Crouch, hence "mwic" .. the Ignatius being my self-chosen baptismal name.

2. I gravitate toward ppl like Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, and Mike Gravel -- basically anyone who "doesn't have a chance."

3. I was a Young Republican once.

4. Like Luke, I converted to Catholicism after a nondemoninational upbringing.

5. I have three boys, named Thelonious Otto, Benjamin Britten, and Sasha Nicholas

6. I stopped reading novels for about 3 years, then started again this year.

7. As a general rule, I dislike eating anything sweet.

On to
1) Michael Mason bro-in-law and sympatico
2) Lorna Jane Mitchell, fellow hacker and as usual way ahead of me since she's already done her 7.
3) Justine Lam of RP fame
4) Mary Kate Rivet, my godmother
5) The great Melanie Bettinelli friend and sometime roomie
6) Tyler Fields coworker and facebooker
7) Josh Calvert. Nuff said.


---

And now the rules:
* Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter

Can RP people miss a target?

For kicks, I think the Ron Paul campaign should say something like this:

"We'd like you to contribute 2 trillion dollars by December 6."

Just see if it happens.

Plug

An Open Letter to Allen Wastler

You are smug. Real smug.

You couch your contempt for Ron Paul supporters in mock admiration for our "organization" or some such nonsense, and imply that we have "hacked" your poll in some way. You contend that you "haven't seen [Dr. Paul] pull those kind of numbers in any 'legit' poll" and I consider that a challenge.

Mr. Wastler, define the time, place, and mechanism for a poll you would consider "legit". I guarantee that Ron Paul will get over 50%.

One minor proviso: it has to be similar, in some way, to a free election in a democratic society. You can't just call your 50 closest friends and ask them. Extend an open invitation for people to come express their preference among the GOP candidates and, once again, I guarantee Dr. Paul will come out with over 50%.

Have a ballot box in the middle of Death Valley if you want. Put it outside your office. We don't care. We're coming out and we're going to demonstrate (again, and again, and again) that we are real Americans with rights.

RCP on RPC

Blake Dvorak of Real Clear Politics amuses and sort of enlightens in a piece called "Ron Paul Country", but makes what seems like a blunder to me, one that is based on a common misunderstanding:

As much as many Republicans might want out of the United Nations, most would balk at abandoning Israel to the mullahs, or Taiwan to the Chinese. In either case, it is not terrorists reacting to some real or imagined slight by the "Great Satan," but sovereign states whose belligerence is checked only by American power.

It is this talk of "abandoning" our allies to which a non-interventionist takes exception. Why look further than Dvorak's two examples? There aren't any US troops in Israel or Taiwan

He is correct that American power is checking belligerent states; he is incorrect to suggest that military power is the only mechanism, or even in these two cases the relevant mechanism, of doing so. Non-interventionists believe that in most cases military interference -- or even presence -- is counterproductive.

Non-interventionists of this stripe are, so far -- and thank God -- apparently in control of our Israel & Taiwan stances.

NB: I'm not a military policy expert by any means; please correct if I'm drastically wrong about something here.

A Pet Peeve

The respectable and intelligent Hugh Hewitt has some interviews from the Texas Straw Poll, and I think they're great.

One note, though, about one of Hewitt's lines of questioning: he asks nearly everyone whether
-They want Dr. Paul to run as an independent if he fails to get the GOP nomination
-Whether they would support the GOP nominee if it's not Dr. Paul
and/or
-How they'd feel if they didn't get behind the GOP nominee, and Hillary "consequently" wins.

As a sometime Green, I have heard this line before. It was used to try to guilt Nader supporters into abandoning their candidate so that Gore could beat Bush.

The offensive assumption in this line of questioning is that some candidate -- by virtue of belonging to a "major party" -- has a right to my vote, and I have to defend my decision to give it to someone else. Sorry, but I find this abhorrent.

If Ron Paul is not the Republican Party's nominee, and runs as an independent, I become the GOPs political opponent. I am one of their obstacles; they have to try to defeat my candidate, by winning me and others over.

They may think that they have a right to my support because I'm "conservative", but they're just wrong. Giuliani does not have a right to my vote because I'm Catholic, and Hillary does not have a right to my vote because I'm a woman.

Fine, I'm not a woman; you get the idea though.

GOP: Run someone who can win. If you don't, you will lose and it will not be Ron Paul's fault.

Scandal!

Colin McNickle searches high and low for a genuine conservative to undo the damage done 1994-2006 when the Republicans outright succombed to temptation and betrayed long-held principles.

Unlike most informed Americans, he does *not find what he's looking for in Congressman Ron Paul. Why? McNickle has discovered a scandalous flaw:

... you simply can't put out of your mind his resemblance to Timothy Leary. On paper on many issues Paul doesn't look bad. Watch him in a debate and two words come to mind: blotter acid

Is there a dailywtf for politics?

The other candidates on the GOP side get pretty competent refutations of how their conservative words don't match their records, or in a couple cases how they don't even bother with conservative words. Dr. Paul gets the oddest guilt-by-association attack I've seen (and if you're an RP watcher, you've seen some odd ones).

In fairness, McNickle takes a moment to add that Paul is also "a flop on defense". No explanation of that charge seems necessary to him.

Here's the official platform of the GOP of my state (Texas) on National Defense:

We continue to encourage and support:
1. funding for a strong national defense, which guarantees maintaining a military which stands ready to defend our nation and increases combat readiness;
2. continued funding and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative
3. disengagement from countries in which we have no clear national defense interest;
4. “America First” priority in protecting the citizens and borders of the United States;
5. not entering into any new arms control agreements with any nation that is not currently complying with previous agreements;
6. the military never being deployed except to defend against an invasion or in protection of the United States’ direct, vital interests; and which may include pre-emptive action
7. maintaining our military’s effective combat strength sufficient to defend our nation’s borders and its strategic interests;
8. expiration of the special emergency war powers of the executive branch unless renewed by Congress in 6 month intervals; and,
9. the immediate deployment of the United States of America’s Military Forces to secure America’s southern border.

If you don't have time to read all that, I think it can be summarized as "Ron Paul is pretty much right about everything." We could quibble about things like the definition of "pre-emptive" (google is your friend), but the fact remains that RP is far from a "flop".

He doesn't look all that much like Leary, either.