Maggie's Farm

Not her best song by any means, but it might give you a sense of why she was my pop favorite in 1964 - before I had heard of Joanie Baez.

Note to you youts - they made films like this long before MTV existed:

Dr. Merc, who is experiencing some nice gusts down in the Keys, wanted to make sure we didn't miss Steyn's piece on Sarah Palin - The Hostess with the Moosest. Steyn emerged from estivation to produce this. It begins:

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

Second, it can't be in Senator Obama's interest for the punditocracy to spends its time arguing about whether the Republicans' vice-presidential pick is "even more" inexperienced than the Democrats' presidential one.

I did kinda wonder what sort of person feels motivated to write two autobiographies at his age. Except for his odd parents and his nomination, what could he have to tell? Anyway, read the whole clever piece.

Photo: Palin works on her husband's commercial fishing boat on weekends. Oh, and did we mention that she runs 7-10 miles per day? Or that she turned Alaska's politics upside down? Or that she refused her governor's perk of car and driver to drive herself to work? Or that she has had more executive experience than Obama, McCain and Biden combined? Plus she is a likeable, non-angry female. As in Insty's case, the females in my family are like totally fired up. Win or lose, she will be a national figure for years to come.

Thanks for this photo from yesterday, reader:

Our pal Roger sent this in today:

Maybe Howard Dean can pick up Hillary Clinton on the waiver wire in the off-season.

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Via Powerline, this is Sarah Palin as Miss Wasilla in 1984. Lots more good photos at Powerline, with comments too, of course. The unhinged Lefties seem truly freaked by Palin's selection. A quote via Classical Values:

Mitt Romney would've been the safe choice--he would've delivered Michigan, along with a 51% victory.

With this choice, McCain has stated his intention to "shoot the moon". He's solidified his existing alliances and has now reached out to many disenchanted Democrats, but without alienating his base of support.

He's going to try for a blowout...

Bill Kristol says:

There will be rocky moments. But they will fade if the McCain campaign lets Palin's journey take its natural course over the next two months. Millions of Americans--mostly but not only women, mostly but not only Republicans and conservatives--seemed to get a sense of energy and enjoyment and pride, not just from her nomination, but especially from her smashing opening performance. Palin will be a compelling and mold-breaking example for lots of Americans who are told every day that to be even a bit conservative or Christian or old-fashioned is bad form. In this respect, Palin can become an inspirational figure and powerful symbol. The left senses this, which is why they want to discredit her quickly.

Big Labor's stake in Obama. PJ. Related, What's in those Annenberg files?

Have you noticed this too? Mental skills fade earlier than thought.

As the earth cools, warming hype gets more hysterical

Via Driscoll: The End of the New Democrats

Dem platform is for whiners. Robert Robb at RCP. It begins:

The Democrats have titled their party platform, "Renewing America's Promise."

A more honest and accurate title would be, "We'll Give You More."

The soul of the Democratic philosophy is summed up in this passage from the platform: "For decades, Americans have been told to act for ourselves, by ourselves, on our own. Democrats reject this recipe for division and failure."

Note the disdain for the ethos of self-responsibility. Democrats do not merely regard it as insufficient. Instead they regard the idea that people should provide for themselves as divisive.

Even more significantly, Democrats regard self-responsibility as a "recipe for failure." In other words, Democrats don't think the American people are capable of making it on their own.

And so, Democrats have a government program for, well, everything.

Democrats want government to help you raise your kids, send them to college, train and retrain for a job, buy a home and save for retirement.

Megan says this. Some truth to it, but it misses the main point, I think, which is that govt isn't about caring - it's about protecting our freedom. Govt does not and cannot "care":

Democrats show little expressed sympathy for those who work to make the money the government taxes to help the beset-upon mother and the soldier and the kids. They express little sympathy for the middle-aged woman who owns a small dry cleaner and employs six people and is, actually, day to day, stressed and depressed from the burden of state, local and federal taxes, and regulations, and lawsuits, and meetings with the accountant, and complaints as to insufficient or incorrect efforts to meet guidelines regarding various employee/employer rules and regulations. At Republican conventions they express sympathy for this woman, as they do for those who are entrepreneurial, who start businesses and create jobs and build things. Republicans have, that is, sympathy for taxpayers. But they don't dwell all that much, or show much expressed sympathy for, the sick mother with the uninsured kids, and the soldier with the shot nerves.

Neither party ever gets it quite right, the balance between the taxed and the needy, the suffering of one sort and the suffering of another. You might say that in this both parties are equally cold and equally warm, only to two different classes of citizens.

This photo just to try to drive our friend Gerry Vanderleun nuts: Sunrise over Duck Creek, Wellfleet, MA, a couple of weeks ago:

From guest poster and Maggie's Farm friend Bruce Kesler. We used to link him frequently when he wrote at Democracy Project.

The 2008 presidential contenders bring to mind the “pulp fiction” of the 1920s-1950s.

Not that there was a dearth of serious writing during pulp fiction’s heyday, but the mass audience sought and was more exposed to pulp’s more exciting genre.  Similarly, today there’s much well-researched political reporting and commentary, but most Americans seek or are presented with blogposts and sound-bites that more directly connect.

More smartly spoken writing or speeches may just as much contain bias or misdirection. In either major media or blogs, the public usually recognizes the basic truths of motivations, words,  actions, and consequences.  Pulp blog readers’ views are frequently as well or better informed as their presumed betters.

The pulps were adventures in outsmarting opponents, often ingenious, often far-fetched.  The adventure settings were Western or wartime or urban detective, or about threatening extraterrestrials or planted mole aliens with adverse intentions.   The primary pulp characters were either quietly  heroic types or nefarious foes.  Good, or relatively so by key decisions or outcomes, battled evil, or relatively so by dint of bad decisions or goals. 

The Internet is largely focused on the play-by-play of outsmarting opponents.  It is  dominated by opinionated blogs treating their favorites as heroes and their foes as threats to the blogwriter’s preferred social and world order.  In major media or blogs, selected facts or supporting opinions are presented to further the theme’s narrative.

The success of pulp fiction’s popular themes was made possible by the inexpensive paper used (pulp stock) for affordable mass-distribution paperbacks that offered a wide range of writers, many of whom came from or attained legitimate fame.  The Internet’s low costs of distribution and access also increase the variety of points-of-view presenting themes appealing to partisans.  A wide range of writers is available, some from backgrounds of accomplishment and some others attaining name recognition.  Meanwhile, the major layoffs and reductions in newsprint have reduced the range of views and depth of newspapers.

Another characteristic of the pulps was their enticing art depicting the valiant defending or the underhanded mishandling the weaker desirable female or the downtrodden.  Today’s candidates have heroic or saintly posters, air self-flattering poses in TV ads that show their opponents in embarrassing clips, and creative and humorous blog photoshops.

Still, underlying both pulp fiction or pulp politics, there must be plausibility.  Even the fantastic requires a factual basis.

Although his rise from meager beginnings and his eloquence are in Barack Obama’s favor, as is his clear (even when obscured for political gain) liberal ideology for those of that inclination, he has hidden most of the little record he has.  In light of seeping revelations from his own mouth and others’ research, his earlier-heralded promise of either hope,  bipartisanship, sagacity, or integrity are increasingly exposed as shallow at best.  It appears to many implausibly fantastic that someone of such unknown or little background, hyperbolically seeming an adult parachuted alien onto America, can be taken seriously as the presidential candidate of a major political party.

The quieter, and less promoted by major media adulation, repeatedly exhibited real world personal and political character and courage of John McCain stands in stark contrast, and for those who weren’t previously aware is recognized in his climbing polls.  That has not remade, nor are observers or conservative bloggers ignoring, his less sterling traits or views.  But the understanding is gaining that character, experience and knowledge are overridingly important in being confronted with existential threats, unusual challenges or gathering broad support for initiatives.

Pulp politics may not be elevated discourse, but it is insightful – more so than the supposedly more respectable but thinly veiled major media tilts - into choices faced by ordinary people.

Bruce Kesler, an avid fan of the pulps and blogs, owns a financial planning and employee benefits firm in Encinitas, CA, whose writings have appeared in many MSM op-eds and blogs.    

We have plenty of political beefs with John McCain, but admire him as an extraordinary American. Maggie's Farm is now on board with this ticket - and not only because their opponents are radical nuts.

Who is Sarah Palin? She is 44 years old, a former mayor, and the first-term governor of Alaska who ran on an anti-corruption platform. She is a strong advocate of offshore drilling. She is the mother of five including a child with Down Syndrome. In her tenure as Alaska governor she has pursued ethics reform, budget reduction, and natural gas development. In short, she is unlike anyone on either ticket and unlike anyone ever to be on a major party’s ticket.

That's from PJ. She is the real deal. She's an evangelical Christian with 5 kids who grew up hunting with her dad. She is reputed to be a crack shot. She has a kid with Downs. She first helped support her young family by working as a commercial fisherman. Her husband is an Eskimo who has been a fisherman and an oil field worker, wears a goatee, who races dogsleds.

For what it's worth, she has more executive experience than all 3 other national candidates combined (and more real life experience than Obama-Biden combined).

Agree with them on everything or not, these two rugged folks and proud Americans are honorary Maggie's Farmers.

Just what I hoped for from McCain - a bold and ballsy and politically brilliant pick. Changes the whole dynamic. 

Not that I do not appreciate the other choices, but I did not want to see Mitt (who I admire a lot) up there. Put Mitt in the Cabinet - anywhere, and he will do any hard job for our country. Just keep him away from the medical.

I never met anybody named Sarah that I didn't like, and this Sarah is full of beans. The un-Hillary, too: she's neither angry nor bitter, and doesn't resent being female.

Good on you, John. She was my choice, too. As a clincher, she's a Lifetime Member of the NRA, and her hubbie is a dog-sledding Eskimo. What more could you ask for?

As Mona Charen says:

Is it just me, or does Sarah Palin seem more genuine than the average pol? Admittedly, I'm strongly prejudiced in her favor because she is the living embodiment of the pro-life cause. But she is also the opposite of the America Obama sketched last night. He wants us all to think of ourselves as broken, beaten, and in need of government help. He caricatures the conservative message as "You're on your own." Palin, of Alaska, still carries the spark of the frontier, the independence, and the spunk. I think Americans will identify with her far more than with Senator (been in Washington for 97 years) Biden.

I want to be "on my own," and I suspect Sarah does too. This pick leaves Obama's pity-pot, America-hating whining in the dust-bin. McCain isn't perfect but he is a fine man, and this Sarah is a super-fine lady.

It's the winning ticket: bet on it.

Along the streambank at the farm:

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Thomas Jefferson: Note in Tracy's "Political Economy," 1816.

From Richard Neuhaus in First Things (2002). He begins:

This is more a story than an argument. It is in some ways a very personal story, and yet not without broader implications. It is just possible that some may discern in the story suggestions of an argument, even an argument about the nature of Lutheranism, and of Protestantism more generally.

When in 1990 I was received by the late John Cardinal O’Connor into full communion with the Catholic Church-on September 8, the Nativity of Our Lady-I issued a short statement in response to the question Why. With Lutheran friends especially in mind, I said, "To those of you with whom I have traveled in the past, know that we travel together still. In the mystery of Christ and his Church nothing is lost, and the broken will be mended. If, as I am persuaded, my communion with Christ’s Church is now the fuller, then it follows that my unity with all who are in Christ is now the stronger. We travel together still."

When Cardinal Newman was asked at a dinner party why he became a Catholic, he responded that it was not the kind of thing that can be properly explained between soup and the fish course. When asked the same question, and of course one is asked it with great frequency, I usually refer to Newman’s response. But then I add what I call the short answer, which is simply this: I became a Catholic in order to be more fully what I was and who I was as a Lutheran. The story that follows may shed some light on that short answer.

Read the whole thing.

This is where Duck Creek empties into Wellfleet Harbor.

...whenever Christians actually dare to make political choices on the basis of those beliefs, then the enlightened gatekeepers of American secularism in the academy and in the media rise up in righteous wrath and rush to the barricades to defend us against the barbarian hordes of true believers who if unchecked will transform our republic into a "theocracy" and impose their intolerant bigotry on everybody else. And when the President himself is one of these religious fanatics, then the prospects for the republic and the Constitution are dark indeed—even the usually rational New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman whined after the election that he was depressed "because Bush's base is pushing so hard to legislate social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing a president." 

The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion.  Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.

Ludwig Van Mises

I'm fairly good with nuance, but 99% of the time good vs. evil is rather clear. A banner from the Dem convention protesters - which might as well be from the Dem convention:

 BTW, I am not saying that the war in Iraq was a good idea. I am open-minded about that, but it's history now. The proof is in the pudding. However, I have no doubt that it was about good vs. evil.

"If you don't want my peaches, don't shake my tree."  That's a line from one of the versions of Blind Lemon Jefferson's perfect song from 1927 - "Matchbox Blues." I don't think Albert King used those lines in this version with Stevie Ray, though.

Our peaches up here in Yankeeland begin to ripen right about now. I get a good crop from this tree every other year, but this is the second great year in a row. I see peach pies in my near future, and maybe a year's worth of canned peach chutney. Also, a good supply of fresh peach chutney, which is better than canned: takes about 15 minutes to make. Photo is from this afternoon:

Sonny Boy Williamson

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.  Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected.  No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

James Madison, National Gazette, 1792

Good grief (h/t Vanderleun). Where's the stable and the manger?

Liberty is the sovereignty of the individual.

Josiah Warren

Sunrise in the Catskills, 1826

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819