The Un-Campaign

Life is very strange. Full of unexpected surprises. Really unexpected.

When this campaign started fifty years ago (it wasn’t fifty years?? It sure felt like it.), it was dull as dishwater. One Republican candidate after another dropped out, and before we knew it, we were faced with a duel between a creaky old veteran, a bitter woman, and a snooty upstart. None of them, we were certain, had what it took to even finish the campaign, let alone win it decicively. It was, unfortunately, and as far as anyone could tell, anybody’s ballgame.

Rush stepped in and gave us a little entertainment about mid-way, with “Operation Chaos,” and that increased the interest factor by orders of magnitude and kept us from dozing off. The interesting thing about this was that, believe it or not, it made a real difference. Operation Chaos kept Hillary in the fight, and to everyone’s surprise, she made a very strong showing against her young rival. But, for some reason, he forced her out of the race, in spite of the fact that she was really ahead (they did this by disallowing the votes from Michigan and Florida). She bowed out gracefully, but refused to release her delegates to Obama. This left the door open for speculation that she would try an eleven o’clock coup at the convention.

By the time the convention rolled around, things had taken a somewhat interesting turn, and many people on the Right were paying more attention than they had since Operation Chaos. Something odd was happening–or not happening–with the Obama campaign. For some strange reason, no matter what Obama did, including an ill-conceived trip to Europe to bolster his numbers (apparently, no one told him Europeans couldn’t vote in U.S. elections), he couldn’t get more than four or five percentage points ahead of McCain. Every time Obama checked his rear-view mirror, there was McCain’s grinning, hoary head looking right back at him.

In a desperate attempt to show how much “change” we could expect, he selected a 36-year mossback from the Senate to be his running mate.

The Democrat convention in Denver floundered around like a fat lady in a tub of jello, and ended with what could only be called a “coronation,” as his acceptance speech. He talked and talked, and used the pronoun “I” so often people thought the needle on the teleprompter was stuck. He turned first to one side, recited his lines, wagged a hand (or pointed), then turned to the other side, recited lines, wagged/pointed, then turned to the first side to do it all again and again, over and over. By the end of the speech, his blugeoned audience was exhausted. Convinced he had sealed his victory, he went back to his hotel waving and smiling…

…only to be greeted the first thing in the morning with a cold mackerel upside the head. Or, should I say, barracuda? McCain, gentlemanly to the end, kindly withheld his VP choice until the day after the acceptance speech, so Obama could bask in the glory.

But the basking didn’t last very long, because McCain’s choice for a running mate was electrifying, and absolutely rocked the country back on its heels. he chose Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, a possible contender that all the in-the-know pundits had quickly discarded as “too inexperienced” and from a state that didn’t have enough people to count. All Alaska had, they learned, was the Mother Lode of energy resources and the hottest governor in the country. And her nickname is “Barracuda.”

Poor Obama’s bounce from the acceptance speech went the way of Pierre’s moustache, while the whole country buzzed with stunned excitement, and fell in love with Todd’s (“First Dude”) wife.

What started out as the longest, dullest, most foregone and inevitable campaign was suddenly very exciting; thrilling even the most jaded observer. Things were definitely looking up.

That dishwater un-campaign has suddenly become the dazzling campaign of “possibility.” From now on, anything can happen, and probably will. I just hope Governor Palin remembered to pack her asbestos underwear.

To All Of You, From All Of Us

 

 

Giving up Sarah Palin is hard to do.  As you can tell, if you have been reading any posts about her on the internet, or listening/watching the news, she is spectacularly unique.  If there is a personification of the term, “Alaskan Woman,” Sarah is that image.

There probably isn’t an awful lot to say about her, now that she’s been discovered.  Alaska is now on the map.  We have also been discovered, and we have mixed feelings about THAT, too.  Compared to life here twenty years ago or so, life in Alaska these days is incredibly complex.  It used to be much simpler to live here (“simpler,” as opposed to “easy”).  Simple lives aren’t necessarily easy.  Just staying warm in the winter can be a challenge.  If you think your gasoline and heating bills are high, think of us next time you fuel up your little hybrids.  We are still paying around $4/gallon for gasoline for cars big enough to deal with Alaskan conditions.  Thanks to Governor Palin’s good management, we will all receive a $1200 supplement to help us afford to heat our homes and drive to work this winter. 

Alaskans have always been good hosts.  We are friendly, generous, and good-natured.  We love company, as we look forward to any excuse for a gathering.  Winters in Alaska are long.  There is almost always snow on the ground by Halloween.  And those long winters can be COLD.  -25 or so is common around here, and in the Interior, around Fairbanks, 45 or 50 below is just as much so.  Although the days aren’t “dark,” they are “darker,” and short.  The sun’s track is short and low, even though most winter days are clear. 

Governor Palin is also an accomplished hunter and fisherman.  I like to tell people who tend to sell her short that she is used to butchering what she kills.  This is a normal attribute for most Alaskans, or was, before we were invaded by civilization.  Game is frequently on our menus, as is wild salmon, halibut, trout, and crab. 

Life here, as I say, is simple, but not easy.  And we do love our Gov.  But, we will be happy to share her with the rest of the country for a while.  Appreciate what she brings to office, and treat her kindly, and return her to us when her time is up, because no matter where she lives, no matter what she does, she will always be Alaskan.  And, we couldn’t be prouder.

PA-LIN! PA-LIN! PA-LIN! Wooot, Wooot!!

John McCain did the right thing last night. He did the SMART thing. He probably cemented his win on November 4 with his pick for VP running mate.

He also made Alaskans very proud, very thrilled, and very sad. Sarah “Barracuda” Palin has been our governor for the last two years, after being mayor of Wasilla (my town) for at least two terms. I won’t go into her biography here, because it will be all over the news for the next few days. Her face will be on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and she will be “kissed, cussed, kicked, and vexed” as my mother used to say. She will be the only topic of discussion on both sides of the campaign for a long time.

But she is fearless, smart, physically strong, smart, not intimidated by powerful politicians, and smart. She is going to be a real credit to this country, no matter what her duties involve.

Alaska is thrilled. We were all shocked, stunned, and amazed when we woke up this morning and turned on the news. We are also saddened, because she has been such a LIGHT for Alaska. I hope the rest of the country appreciates her like we do.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry…

Maybe this will help.

This Is Not Surprising…

I received an email from RedState.com that caught my attention, so I followed the link to the website, and here’s what I found:

Be SURE to check this link and read the whole thing.

TRIUMPH: A Half-Baked Book Report

BOOK REPORT
“TRIUMPH” by H.W. Crocker, III, 2001

This book was so good, I read the last page, then turned the book over and started it again. And, I’m ashamed to admit that it took me this long to finish it. I started it the year it was published, but had so many life-altering distractions in the interim, that it’s taken me until now to dig it out and finish the reading of it.

It is a contemporary history of the Catholic Church and Western civilization and culture throughout history, from the time of Jesus until the reign of Pope John Paul II.

Crocker is a young man, a recent convert to Catholicism, who gives a good account of his British education in History. Don’t let his conversion lead you to think that he glosses over the negative aspects of Church history. He does an excellent job of exposing cupidity, corruption, and nepotism, internecine squabbles, and various and sundry little-known events in the history of world civilization.

Crocker’s basic premise is that the history of the Church IS the history of Western civilization for the first thousand years or so, and he does an excellent job of backing it up, with writing that is clear, incisive, and often witty. One of the marks of a good writer is that he get his point across clearly, in as few words and sentences as possible. Crocker does an excellent job of doing just that, and manages to include numerous little-known facts and details.

The book is wide-ranging, while never losing sight of the main idea. If you put this book beside your copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, you will find yourself possessing a fairly complete knowledge of the Faith.

Even though, as I say, it was released more than eight years ago, it’s an easily-recommended book. If you take the time to read it, I am sure that you will enjoy it at least as much as I did. I would love to read an update from Crocker covering the years since 2001 to the present.

He does include a powerful discussion on the internal attacks on the Tradition of the Church from the time of Vatican II to 2001, and includes a quote from historian Robert Nisbet on the devastation of the decade of the Sixties.

I quote it here:

“I think it would be difficult to find a single decade in the history of Western culture when so much barbarism–so much calculated onslaught against culture and convention in any form, and so much sheer degradation of both culture and the individual–passed into print, into music, into art and onto the American stage as the decade of the Nineteen Sixties.”

FOB (Friends Of Barack)

Just in case you haven’t seen this one yet….

Pass it around.

Portrait of the Compleat Demonstrator

Rush’s Answered Prayer

So, the Democrats have picked Joe Biden as Barack Hussein Obama’s running mate. This could mean several things, not the least of which is that they are blind, deaf, and have lost the ability to think clearly. Biden?? BIDEN?? Plagiarizing Joe Biden?

But, it’s not hard to deduce from this that perhaps the sparkly is wearing off their Golden Boy. He should be at least fifteen points ahead in at least half the polls, but he is statistically tied virtually across the board with the Republican candidate-presumptive, John McCain. And, McCain hasn’t even picked his running mate yet.

But the Democrats appear to be losing some momentum lately. Obama can’t keep his feet out of his mouth, and the polls seem to be simply withering on the vine. The enthusiasm and momentum we saw just a couple of weeks ago have gone POOF! like Pierre’s moustache, and Obama is drawing smaller and smaller crowds, and making insupportable statements more frequently. It’s hard to surge ahead when you have to keep backtracking and cleaning up the messes your star leaves behind.

The DNC appears to have taken charge of the campaign, and have chosen Barack’s running mate for him, in the hopes of making sure he doesn’t wander TOO far afield in his hubristic pursuit of the Messiahship. I’m no expert on these kinds of things, but it seems to me that the party is experiencing some buyers’ remorse as a result of their choice of Obama.

Of course, it seemed like such a good idea at the time; like a galvanizing choice. The excitement of fielding the first Black candidate made them starry-eyed with anticipation, and the response of supporters seemed to ratify the decision. Crowds screamed his name, women fainted, money poured in. It was all just too perfect. But since then, Obama’s star, once shooting for the heavens like a shuttle launch, has fizzled like a cheap roman candle.

McCain has been handed a miraculous event, and what happens next is entirely up to him. The person he chooses for a running mate is going to make or break his campaign, and if the Republicans have done anything to free themselves of the “Stupid Party” monicker, the election can make history in a lot of ways.

Just think: When this ENDLESS campaign started back in May and June, it was as dull as dishwater. One by one, all the really logical candidates were shunted to the sidelines while the Stupid Party pushed John McCain to the front. The Democrats were ecstatic with the choice, because he was, to their eyes, the weakest candidate in the Republican stable, and he seldom spoke out with anything like passion, leaving the excitement to his opponent, and giving the impression that he was a tired old man, too pooped to campaign.

In the meantime, Obama/Biden is the choice for the Democrats, for good or ill. The Republicans have such a golden opportunity to win this election even before November that it takes my breath away. But, since they are the Stupid Party, it can still be squandered like a sailor’s sea pay. It’s getting so interesting, I may have to go buy some more popcorn. This is the kind of situation that should make the pundits squirm with anticipation.

Oh, yes. Rush’s prayer. On Friday’s show, he was heard to mutter softly, “Let it be Biden! Please, let it be Biden!”

A Couple Of Things…

Go HERE and watch the video. I guarantee you you will not be prepared for what you will hear. If anybody ever had it right, this woman does. if the video (shows a blonde woman in a hearing) does not appear, go to New Media Journal, and click on the “Government” category on the left side of the page. The video is worth the extra trouble.

Okay…on to other things.

Every time I hear T. Boone Pickens (RICH OIL MAN T. Boone Pickens) make his play for my checkbook, it makes me want to shoot the lunch. He says something about how desperately we need to have windmills to supplement petroleum supplies. As a RICH OIL MAN, one would expect ol’ T-Bone to know a little more about oil and gas production than he’s letting on in these ads. To hear him tell it, we are sucking up the last fumes of the last gallon of petroleum, and are doomed to go back to whale oil lamps and surries with the fringe on top. Apparently, T-Bone didn’t get the memo about the ability of nuclear plants to provide CLEAN, abundant energy for a fraction of the cost/frustration of windmills.

I don’t know a lot about windmills, but I do know that they are extremely inefficient producers of energy, and they can’t run without motors to power them. This, along with their utter impracticality (high winds mean the windmills must be shut down, or they will vibrate to pieces). And, hasn’t ol’ T-bone been listening to the debates about opening up the rest of the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling and exploration, or the monstrous finds of oil around this country that could make us the new Saudi Arabia, and end our dependence on foreign oil forever?? How STUPID does he think we are? (I’m curious…I’d be interested to know just how many people know who he is, how big a liar he is, and how many fall for his line and sign up for his scam, er, scheme.) Even little old ladies like me know how DUMB it would be to try to run this country (as well as the rest of the industrilaized world) on what dribs and drabs of expensive energy could be derived from “alternative sources” all the time we are sequestering our own abundant supplies of cheap, available petroleum. Really…just how stupid do they think we are??

The Liberal Left in America has gone out of its way to make America a beggar when it comes to oil. They won’t be satisfied until they have this country barefoot and skritching out an existence at the city dump, or to see a nation with just two classes of people: Us (the dump-skritchers) and them, the elites who will continue to consume and condescend, who make the dumps possible. To them, “middle class” is a dirty word. They forget that the Middle Class is the group of Americans who make this country work, who keep the engines of its prosperity humming. No middle class, no prosperity. Simple.

It’s always kind of discouraging to see someone whom you thought was a productive member of a market society suddenly turn his coat and jump on the bandwagon of the anti-market belly-achers. (RICH OIL MAN) T. Boone Pickens and (RICH ENVIROWHACKO) Al Gore, in the same canoe. Who’da thunk it? Arthur D. Robinson, Ph. D., a real scientist, has put it best. Don’t miss his enlightening article.

I dunno… If the world’s demand for petroleum keeps increasing, and the United States has incredible petroleum/coal/shale/gas resouces, doesn’t it make a little bit more sense to just start to work bringing these resources to market? It seems to me that if the world is desperate for oil, and we have a huge bunch, shouldn’t WE be the ones selling it, instead of the ones BUYING it??

I’m just sayin’ is all…

Aha!

Oh, I LOVE it when truth finds its way into common knowlege, and the people who try to manipulate the world with lies get the wind taken out of their sails.

Look what Wattsupwiththat found.