Defending the 12th century since the 14th; blogging since the 21st.

Catholicism, Conservatism, the Middle Ages, Opera, and Historical and Literary Objets d'Art blogged by a suburban dad who teaches law and writes stuff.


"Very fun." -- J. Bottum, Editor, FIRST THINGS

"Too modest" -- Elinor Dashwood

"Perhaps the wisest man on the Web" -- Henry Dieterich

"Hat tip: me (but really Cacciaguida)" -- Diana Feygin, Editor, THE YALE FREE PRESS

"You are my sire. You give me confidence to speak. You raise my heart so high that I am no more I." -- Dante

"Fabulous!"-- Warlock D.J. Prod of Didsbury

Who was Cacciaguida? See Dante's PARADISO, Cantos XV, XVI, & XVII.


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John Podhoretz: Ten Reasons Why McCain Might Win

Plus two that John didn't get:

1. McCain does best with "retail" campaigning: diner to diner, front porch to front porch. That's one of the ways he revived his moribund campaign for the nomination. Even his rallies (and I attended one) have since late September had the heart-to-heart feel of true retail campaigning, rather than the rah-rah-kick-their-butts feel of more conventional campaigning. (He has Palin for that, and she does it very well!)

2. McCain has always done best in a comeback situation, as he did in the primaries. I said months ago that he'd be hopeless in the general election unless he had a good solid poll-deficit in mid-October. And he certainly did.
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:35 PM

 
The Phillies just won the World Series. The last time they did that was in 1980. A few days later, Ronald Reagan was elected President, despite a widespread superstition that a National League victory in the Series always portends a Democrat victory in the election.

I'm just saying.

(And congratulations, Gerald E.!)
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:04 PM

 
Christ the King

Tomorrow, Oct. 25, is the Feast of Christ the King in the Extraordinary Form calendar (last Sunday of October). This feast will occur in the Ordinary Form calendar on Nov. 23 (last Sunday of Ordinary Time).

I don't know what if anything Canon Law says on this point, but, lacking such knowledge, my opinion is that those with access to each form of the Western Rite can celebrate this feast twice each year, and I intend to. Once before, and once after, the presidential election, to show that, in the final analysis -- presidents, temporal kings, other secular pooh-bahs, on s'en moque, quoi?
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:34 PM

 
Mark Steyn on Obama on-line fundraising and "Mr Fake Donor" of "23 Fraudulent Lane":

The gentleman who started the ball rolling made four donations under the names "John Galt", "Saddam Hussein", "Osama bin Laden", and "William Ayers", all using the same credit card number. He wrote this morning to say that all four donations have been charged to his card and the money has now left his account. Again, it's worth pointing out: in order to enable the most basic card fraud of all - multiple names using a single credit card number - the Obama campaign had to manually disable all the default security checks provided by their merchant processor.

The reader adds:

Last night on Sheppard Smith’s 3pm-ET show this issue was brought up briefly and they cited the Obama campaign falsely claiming that this sort of thing happens at the McCain site and that they catch these errors later in the processing. Well, it took three days to process my donations and they all skated through their rigorous screening.

And it doesn't happen at the McCain site. This reader tried donating under "John Galt" and "Saddam Hussein" to the McCain campaign and they rejected it.

Powerline comments: "Of course, in the world we live in, our reporters are too busy covering Sarah Palin's shoes and hair stylist to have time to notice that Barack Obama's entire campaign may be based on a foundation of criminal fraud."
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:10 PM

 
Pollster who was closest to right in 2004 says 2008 is now a 1.1% spread

New Republic blogger tremulously sketches how Obama could lose, even without a "catastrophic external event."
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:05 PM

 
Voice mail. Our university is significantly upgrading its voice-mail system, which will give me occasion to review my "greeting." Tell me what you think of these alternatives.

"You have reached the office Il Professore Cavaliere Cacciaguida....

1. "....I am currently in a secret meeting with the Jesuits to Counter the Reformation. If you are calling to seek my intercession with the Inquisition on behalf of a family member, you know perfectly well that can't be done. If you have any other message, please leave it after the tone."

2." ....Thanks to our new system, which allows me to check voice-mail messages on the Web, a chance now exists that I will retrieve your message. On the other hand, if you were someone I wanted to talk to, you would know to send me an e-mail message instead of calling, or you would have my cell phone number. So all I can say is, at the tone, give it a whirl and we'll see what happens."
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:56 PM

 
Latest RealClearPolitics poll average is Obama +5, down from Obama +7 a few days ago and on the edge of the margin of error. What the...?
posted by Cacciaguida at 7:02 PM

 
Predictions:

It will come down to some 500-or-so disputed ACORN-registered voters in Ohio (or PA, VA, FL, CO, NM, WI, or MO, but most likely OH).

The Republicans will file the first lawsuit (it was the Dems who did so in 2000).

The election will be in litigation through Thanksgiving at least.

It's anyone's guess whether the Supreme Court will once again consider the statutory electoral vote counting deadline of Dec. 12 to be significant. (There is grounds for hoping that the litigation does not go beyond the courts of the forum state, no matter how biased it may be. I know nothing about the present condition of the Ohio S.Ct.)

Very possibly McCain will emerge the winner because the disputed voters were blatantly ineligible, but he will take office with all the prestige editorial pages declaring this yet another illegitimate Supreme Court coup, and civil disorder on the verge of following on financial disorder, perhaps reigniting it. Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:17 PM

 
I did not watch the final debate. I was actually at a jolly lawyers' dinner talking about lawyer stuff, almost entirely unrelated to the election, and it was really fun.

Consider the comment boxes to be "Open mike Whateverday," esp about the election and the final debate. But if you've got something you've been wanting to get off your chest about the nature of the universe, by all means....
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:10 PM

 
A must-read on polling from NRO. Conclusion: the deficit is 4-5 points, not the 12-14 found by some pollster and widely splayed across front pages. Find out why one political scientist thinks the pollsters with the big spreads are misleading the public.
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:16 PM

 
Writing in The New York Post, Amir Taheri quotes Jesse Jackson as saying of an Obama presidency:

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end.

Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

So, Obama gets the paleocon vote -- but is New York now in play? :)

posted by Cacciaguida at 9:57 PM

 
"Troopergate" report: piffle, says Powerline.

Powerline has also been tracking evidence of Obama's membership in something called the New Party, whose manifesto places it several turns of the crank to the left of even today's Democratic Party.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:54 PM

 
Babar!!
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:36 PM

 
From the Acton Institute: Thomas E. Woods (not all of whose written works I can endorse) offers a great take-down of distributism, which cannot be too often taken down.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:00 PM

 
Second debate -- a draw. Boring. I was leafing through Charles Tyrwhitt and Brooks Brothers catalogues while listening for gaffes, or indeed, anything other than undeserved compliments for each questioner followed by a lego-house of familiar talking-points.

Do presidential "debates" serve a purpose anymore? Maybe we should just have vice-presidential debates and then give presidential candidate ninety minutes of free commercials, with commentary afterwards by the people who rate the commercials after the Super Bowl. I'll bet American campaign know-how would prove better at making Super-Bowl-caliber commercials than at putting wind-up candidates on a stage.

OTOH -- Obama's recent lead is shrinking. And Leno actually did an Obama joke: "The town-hall format is John McCain’s favorite, as opposed to Barack Obama’s favorite way — Sermon on the Mount."

Letterman's Top Ten Signs You're Watching a Bad Presidential Debate:

10. It's a town hall debate, but the town is in a mountainous region of Pakistan
9. Tom Brokaw leaves early to catch 9:15 showing of "Beverly Hills Chihuahua"
8. Topics fall into the categories "Domestic policy," "Foreign policy," and "Burt Reynolds Films of the '70s"
7. Keep arguing about who has more friends on Facebook
6. Candidate says, "Why you hatin'?" Other responds, "Why you buggin'?"
5. It's covered by CBS, NBC, ABC, and the Howard 100 News team
4. Candidates ignore questions and gossip about which Senate pages are sluts
3. The yodeling competition
2. Disproportionate amount of questions about "The Hills"
1. It's 90 minutes of folksy phrases and winking

You betcha!

posted by Cacciaguida at 10:48 AM

 
Meet "Good Will" and "Doodad Pro," just two of (apparently) many Obama campaign donors of no known address or employment, and who have given his campaign tens of thousands of dollars in $10 and $25 dollar increments.

The RNC is suing.

If the McCain campaign is run by professionals, like Lee Atwater in 1988, Good Will and Doodad Pro are now Obama's running mates. Picture it: Good and Doodad sky-trailers at every Obama campaign appearance; Gene Delgaudio's street-thespians dressed up as Good and Doodad giving interviews about their munificence. C'mon guys, it's October 5....

And a big shoutout to Newsweek for setting aside its normal "Help us Obama-won, you're our only hope" coverage to break the story. You betcha! *Wink*
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:54 PM

 
I've just figured out the real dynamic of the GOP ticket: McCain is an unusually old Maxwell Smart, and Palin is an unusually feisty 99! They get into fixes, but in the end, "niceness" triumphs over "rottenness."

Watch for them (probably Palin) to warn that Obama's policies would unleash "chaos."
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:29 PM

 


Yer shoe's untied!
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:16 PM

 
Rapid response: The McCain Store now has a You Betcha! department.
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:51 PM

 
You betcha! *Wink!*

ABC News: As Map Shrinks, Palin Gives McCain Ticket Opening For New Storyline

Fox News: Palin Performance Helps McCain Regain Political Footing
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:10 PM

 
YESSS!

Maybe she got the name of the commander in Afghanistan wrong, but she got what he said right. Biden scored brownie points by not correcting her on the name, but he saved his own butt by not insisting on his version of the general's remarks.

Palin's smile was a little too permed on for my taste, but apart from that, her style was right for her. I can imagine a lot of my friends not approvin' of all them country-western-style speakin' ways, but if that's part of letting Palin be Palin, then I still say let Palin be Palin ("Paling"?). Those who won't like it aren't voting Republican this year anyway.

Above all she was never tongue-tied and never deer-in-the-headlights. Biden, for his part, never ran off into circular postmodern rambles -- but that was because of the time limits, and you'll have noticed how often he had to refer to the time-limit lights going off.

Even the commentators (I was watching the ABC crew, with includes George Stepalloverus, who had previously pontificated that Palin couldn't afford even the teeny-weeniest mistake) were all on about both had done well, pleased their supporters, allayed doubts, etc. Translated from MSMspeak, that means Sarah kicked ass.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:38 PM