G as in Good H as in Happy

"Baberaham Lincoln"

August 30 (referencing August 29), 2008

Picked up by Flares into Darkness:

While the national media and some democrats have had a field day with the Palin VP pick, most Alaskan dems have been wandering around dazed and disoriented, feeling like the rug was pulled out from under us.

My plea is "Don't underestimate her."...

Sarah is a shark. She is smart, and she is shrewd. However, she comes across as extremely personable; you can't help but like her in person. She is a good public speaker, I've seen better from her in Alaska, and considering how little time she had to prepare for today's speech, I think we'll see much better from her in the near future.

The biggest mistake we can make is to write her off, ignore her, or think she won't bring anything to the campaign. Quit with the jokes and the remarks about how cute and quaint she is. Stop with the pats on the back....

The experience debate disappears now, let it disappear. It seems many Dems feel a vindictive need to bring up the experience issue after it's been applied to Obama so many times. Don't. Experience is a non-issue, she won in Alaska by being the inexperienced, outside candidate, and the Rs will, and already have, argued that she has more "executive experience" than Obama anyways. This is an opportunity to take the experience issue off the table, lets take it.

Our job is to remember and remind everyone else that it is John McCain running for President and not Sarah Palin. This means dropping the "old and dying" stuff. The jokes and comments that McCain's VP might become president in the next 4 years. We don't want people thinking about Sarah as the President.

I say this because I believe Sarah could win if she were the one running for President. Sure she's from a small town in Alaska and has only been the Governor for 2 years, but it doesn't matter; she is as of today on the national stage. McCain's campaign will do its best to lead with the pretty, energetic woman and let you forget that he's the one that would sit in the big chair. People will like her, and she will be a name in the Republican party for quite a while now.

Title reference here.

UPDATE:
Further interesting discussion here, here, and here.

Part of the mythology: She played basketball with a stress fracture, and gave a speech in Texas while in labor with her fifth child.

And now this fun with partisan graphics:

Secular Protestant Engaged...

September 16, 2006

...in manufacturing grievances to justify demanding apology from Pope Benedict XVI

RIPTEC

Post-GC2006 (Columbus) Verse:

What shall we do?
Cry denizens of the polished pew.
Remit the schism, I
Reply,
Or, from the longer point of view,
Two!

[Inside baseball.]

Update, courtesy of Pontifications comment:

Piglet not Pork

Good&Happy believes happiness and virtue could snuggle a little more affectionately in company with members of Congress.

Here's N.Z. Bear's Porkbusters' petition, courtesy Instapundit. We're in. Not usually signatory to "causes," we hold some truths to be self-evident...

"Serenity Now..."

The wisdom of "no TV Chez Dilys" is confirmed by the rumors of disingenuity trickling out here into our sunny silent establishment regarding the confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court candidate. Peggy Noonan has some fun.

One Less Thing...

December 27, 2005
...to feel guilty about.

A letter, apparently authenticated, written by the journalist Upton Sinclair has come to light in California: Sinclair was told by the lawyer for Sacco and Vanzetti, poster children for systematized American injustice according to his story Boston, that the pair were guilty as all get-out and that plausible alibis had been constructed by the defense.

Politics and the Paperboy

Is it as simple as density? Square footage? Sightlines to the horizon? Can these elements toward which we gravitate determine so much more (and is the preference even genetic, almost certainly neurological?) Then, leading to the economics of newspaper reporting and delivery...

Change rings again via telephones, and more recently the Internet. The next change is just beginning, including off-site employment: The author of the TCS column, Patrick Cox, is an economist and editorial columnist in Central Florida where he lives on an island in a remnant of original everglades. Where until recently only weird Carl Hiaasen heroes lived.

Though Dilys lived in Orlando for the part of the 20th Century she most wants to forget.

Epic Poetic Justice

December 16, 2005

Robert Avrech's cinematic mind, and fierce ancestral loyalty that fires his imagination, pull it together as he contemplates this worrying and historic moment.

In 1979, [the Ayatollah Khomeini] and his mad mullah buddies eventually expelled several thousand Jews from Iran.

Iraqi Election

December 15, 2005

Only 45 Days...

... til The Festival That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Overkill on Wal-Mart's switch of "Christmas"  "christmas" to winter "Holiday" in too-many-anthrolopology-classes commerce-speak (let me just 'splain this, you lame ignorant hegemonic bigoted customer, you..., signed, Kirby):

“Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this.  The majority of the world still has different practices other than ‘christmas’ which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with ‘christmas’ red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses[sic], mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal.  It is a wide wide world.”

And this analysis addresses understandable observant Jewish concerns exactly how?

Tidings of God rest ye whatever, buddy. We like the part about the "Siberian shaman," whom it is apparently still OK to venerate. We don't even want to know about his rough approximation of milk and cookies, or exactly what largesse Baal might deposit under the tree for His devotees upon the epiphany of His slouching near at Baalmas. We are eager, on the other hand -- dare we hope to steal a glimpse of black-clad multi-pierced brooding dropout youth as they fell the massive oak to drag to the Great Hall of the feudal lord? And, oooh, oooh, best of all, Euric the Singular Arian Visigoth sporting his new Aisle 13 Christmas christmas wristwatch.

Oh, well, doesn't matter. It's all the same. Don't forget the tinselled chacmool for the Latin market.