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.


E-mail me

 
I was right.
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:39 PM

 
It would appear that Palin is being over-coached, over-managed, and under-deployed. She should protest and resist.

It is possible, of course, that some of this is just a very effective playing of the "expectations game" for the debate on Oct. 2.

Geraldine Ferraro is saying: “She has got to sit down and go over all of John McCain’s votes.” Hogwash, poppycock, and horsedookey. There are a million other things she could be asked about, and what's she supposed to say then -- "I don't know, but would you like to hear how John McCain voted on the Treasury-Postal Appropriation Bill in 1998?" Come on -- this is deliberate sabotage by Ferraro.

Let Palin be Palin. For every issue, she should have a theme, and then let herself rip and riff on that theme. There were debates and candidate fora in the Alaska Governor's race, in which she unseated an incumbent of her own party and went on to beat a popular Democrat. She should go by her "Sarah Barracuda" political instincts, not by her lessons in Wonk-in-a-Week.

In the above-linked Fox story, Douglas Brinkley says: “She’s cunning and smart and people who underestimate her could be sorry.”
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:51 PM

 
Christian-Jewish forum defends Pope Pius XII

Pope defends wartime predecessor
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:05 PM

 
Naturally I get a lot of fundraising e-mails from the McCain campaign, but this latest one, routed through GOPUSA, had the subject-line -- I swear -- "Sarah Palin needs your help!"



I'm off!!
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:43 PM

 
Rudman, Danforth to head McCain anti-vote-fraud committee. Good choices: John Danforth has cred with everybody, and Warren Rudman has cred with Souter, if it should come to that, as with sinking horror we realize it may.

Marc Armbinder updates here on the charges and counter-charges, and a lawsuit already filed, in Michigan.

Of particular concern is ACORN, the community organizer of all community organizers, which has endorsed Obama, has long ties to him -- and his doing its voter-registration thing in its signature style. Newsmax, fwiw, quotes Danforth, from a tele-news conference:

In Colorado, ACORN registered some individuals 40 separate times. Danforth noted that the ACORN director in Ohio played this down, saying in effect just because you register somebody 35 times doesn’t mean that they get to vote 35 times. “So, a fairly cavalier attitude,” he concluded.

posted by Cacciaguida at 11:45 AM

 
Thomas Vanderwoude

I know the pace of blogging here hasn't kept up with the pace of events. In part that's because I've been thinking about the life and example of Tom Vanderwoude, an old friend from my Manassas days who died suddenly on September 9. A father of seven and grandfather of 24, he died rescuing his youngest son, Joey, a Down's Syndrome child, from drowning in a septic tank. The rescue of Joey succeeded, but Mr. Vanderwoude himself drowned. (That's not a generic dad-and-son file photo in the post at GetReligion.com: that's actually Mr. Vanderwoude and Joey. I'd know the Mr. Vanderwoude's hair and Joey's gait anywhere.)

Every Catholic in Manassas knew the Vanderwoude family. Elinor's succinct portrait of the man is here; I can't say I knew him as a close personal friend, just as I can't imagine calling him "Tom." But everyone knew about the life of service to family, parish, and local lay-run Catholic School (the Seton School, one of two fine schools of its kind in Manasses, the other being Holy Family Academy) that he lived.

Joey I knew slightly better. He is 20 now (and the news stories need updating: though he did not yet know of his father's sacrifice while in the hospital, he was present at the funeral). He was ten when we moved away from Manassas. I remember him best from when he was, oh, three, four, or five-ish. They say that one of the effects of Down's, alongside the less desirable ones, are that Down's kids are very loving. Joey used to run up and hug me after Mass for no particular reason. And I'm not very loveable. Maybe it was the Down's; maybe it was that plus a simple conclusion that since dads of boys are loveable, I must be too.

I set all this alongside some of the stinkpiles in American society that have been prodded open by the public conversation about the Palin family. For example, let Mark Steyn tell you here about an e-mail he received about Trig, the Palin with Down's.

The "culture war" is the one in which one side sees Joey Vanderwoude or Trig Palin as a "retard" and a poster child for abortion and human "spaying," and in which the other sees its role model in a man who doesn't think twice about risking and then giving his life -- many future happy years of playing with the grands and (eventually) greatgrands, watching the younger kids form their own families, coaching future generations of Seton students, etc. etc. -- to save Joey.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:47 PM

 
Jimmy Kimmel sez: It’s a bear market — and Sarah Palin is just the lady to shoot it for us.

And Craig Ferguson sez:

McCain and Obama are tied. The polls are saying today that they each have 56 percent. Is it me? I think people are thinking it’s like “American Idol” — you can vote as many times as you like.

Let's not joke too much about that: the lawsuits are already starting -- along with both creative Democratic crank-up-the-vote-drives and ham-fisted Republican "voter security" moves.

(And about that tie: yes, it's basically a tie again, or maybe even a tiny Obama lead. But Obama's already-narrow lead in PA and CO has virtually vanished. VA teeters; today it's back in the McCain column, tho' still within the margin of error, where it's likely to stay. OH continues to lean McCain. MI is a toss-up; Palin campaigned there yesterday. Keep track at RealClearPolitics.com. And let Dick Morris cheer you up, here.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:41 AM

 
Biden calls paying taxes a patriotic act. "Oh say, you will pay...."

Did McCain Diss Spain? Mainly on the plane.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:41 AM

 
Leno on Sarah being back in Alaska: On her first day back, she shot two campaign commercials, a moose, and a caribou.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:36 PM

 
Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) explains: "After the siege of Vienna and the glorious victory of Sobieski over the Turks (12 Sept., 1683), the feast was extended to the universal Church by Innocent XI, and assigned to the Sunday after the Nativity of Mary by a Decree of 25 Nov., 1683."
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:28 PM

 


Seven years and the summer is over

-- T.S. Eliot
posted by Cacciaguida at 7:54 PM

 
From the late-night circuit (via Newsmax):

Leno: Sarah Palin’s glasses have become a hot item. Those Joe Biden hair plugs? Not so much. They can’t give those away.

Letterman: They’re saying that Barack Obama is starting to slip in the polls. But don’t worry. He has a plan. He’s going to go back to campaigning in Europe.
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:42 PM

 
Huffpost blogger: "re-regulate" the media and "dismantle" the Republican party; otherwise, see, "we" might "frickin' lose." Hat-tip: DZ

Boston Herald columnist: Obama's media well-wishers are his biggest problem. "The harder the media work to elect Obama, the lower his poll numbers go."

Jonah Goldberg: "The more Obama has to explain why being a community organizer -- or a state legislator, or a one-term senator with few accomplishments under his belt -- is better preparation for the presidency than being a mayor or governor, the more he volunteers his own shortcomings when compared with McCain."
posted by Cacciaguida at 12:18 AM

 
Bishops criticize Biden's abortion comments

..."Protection of innocent human life is not an imposition of personal religious conviction but a demand of justice," they added....

[Justice Cardinal] Rigali, of Philadelphia, is chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities. -Bishop William] Lori, of Bridgeport, Conn., is chairman of the bishops' Committee on Doctrine.

Bishop Lori is also Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus, and a former Auxiliary Bishop of Washington D.C.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:31 PM

 
A miracle of Sarah Palin: she has raised Elinor's blog Mommentary from the dead!
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:28 AM

 
Birthday of the Blessed Mother. No, no, no, not that blessed mother -- the Blessed Mother.
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:22 PM

 
McCain jumps ahead of Obama in latest poll.

Accompanying photo shows McCain buying "jars of salsa at El Pinto restaurant in Albequerque, N.M., for himself and his vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin." Palin needs salsa to quench her burning thirst. Little-known fact.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:44 AM

 



Awesome!

My LKFs from tonight would probably be:

* Sarah Palin has trucks delivering extra ass for her to kick.
* Sarah Palin had a few extra cans of whup-ass hidden on a shelf inside the podium in case she ran low on her natural suppy, but of course she didn't.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:19 PM

 


Levi Johnston and fiancee Bristol Palin welcomed to St. Paul by John McCain:
Major political photo?
Mantle of grandfatherly protection?
Old captain welcoming raw recruits aboard, damn the torpedos?
posted by Cacciaguida at 7:36 PM

 
About tonight -- I mean, The Speech:

I don't do Twitter, but for those of you who do, Palinfacts.com has an announcement for you that I'd like to pass on in a spirit of Sarahndipity:

Attention Twitterati…

Sarah Palin wants to see some people talking. Tomorrow night [i.e. tonight, 9/3], during her speech, it’s the first Little Known Fact-a-Thon. Stream your LKFs while she speaks. If you got to this site through some other avenue, sign up for a Twitter account and join in.

posted by Cacciaguida at 3:50 PM

 
Maggie Gallagher on the sexual politics of Palin:

How did McCain know? A moose-hunting pioneer woman is the perfect choice to be America's first female vice president.

Is Sarah Palin up to being president of the United States? Hey, listen, anyone who can raise five children while governing Alaska successfully enough to earn over an 80 percent approval rating -- I'm just not worried about.

Gov. Sarah Palin can do whatever she has to do, and she can do whatever needs to be done.

That's her conclusion. But it's worth reading the whole thing to see how Maggie got there.

ETA: In another version of the same article, Maggie adds to the lede:

Forget about Gov. Sarah Palin.

Seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin is better qualified than Barack Obama to be president of the United States in at least one respect: Figuring out when a baby gets human rights is apparently not above her pay grade.

posted by Cacciaguida at 3:40 PM

 
"The Case Against the Case Against Palin": Continuing, for the mo', our all-Palin all-the-time format, we note that a liberal (of course) blogger at The New Republic has generously passed on to readers an e-mail he received from "a very good friend, who is a lifelong Alaskan and one of the smartest people I know," offering a "word of caution to those (yes, like me [blogger Christoper Orr]) inclined to take Sarah Palin lightly."

There you can read, inter alia:

Palin slaughtered the incumbent in the primary--posting a 30 point margin of victory--and went on to win the general (over a former Democratic governor) without seeming to break a sweat. She then quickly fulfilled an implicit campaign promise by slapping down ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips in negotiations over a proposed Alaska natural gas pipeline, even though they, too, by all accounts, were well prepared to dine on her tender little frame. Not bad for a lightweight....

What the Republicans missed about Sarah Palin then--and what the Democrats seem poised to miss now--is that she is a true political savant; a candidate with a knack for identifying the key gripes of the populace and packaging herself as the solution. That keen political nose has enabled her to routinely outperform her resume. Nearly two years into her administration, she still racks up approval ratings of 80 per cent or better.

And a lot more. Hat-tip: FAD

Sarah Palin will be the first woman to be President.

Sarah Palin is the new Reagan.

Sarah Palin will give birth to the man who will lead humanity’s war against the machines.

posted by Cacciaguida at 11:57 AM

 
Palin update: Turns out liberals are outraged by premarital sex, and think a mother of five should stay home with her kids. Who knew?
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:23 PM

 
This is GREAT!
posted by Cacciaguida at 4:24 PM