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Sixty-eight candles make a lovely light

Scenes from a Birthday Party. Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, a bottle of cognac and a gentleman's portable umbrella were among the gifts for Tuck's 68th, frosting on the cake of a Cold Turkey Cookbook Birthday Eleganza computerside last evening. First course (not pictured), a Tucker favorite we hadn't served in years, steamed artichokes with butter dip.

Checking in at the California Artichoke Advisory Board website for how long to steam the 'chokes — 25-45 minutes, till center petal pulls out easily — we came upon this showstopper, Artichoke Benedict. Look to the animals, and look to the plants.

First among equals, most exclaimed-over gift of the night was The Daily Carrot. We present a carrot to our hubby each afternoon before supper, trying to outdo ourselves from day to day by surprising him with ever more creative contexts. One memorable presentation involved laying the carrot in the arms of the SpongeBob atop his computer. Another had the carrot hidden in plain sight amidst the finger foods of a Friday Puzzle Date doib plate. This time we raised the bar, setting the bright orange taproot — as one would a precious jewel — inside an acetate teabox, wrapped and ribboned to blend in with the other gifts, most of which he knew about ahead of time, having helped us pick them out. "Do I know what this is?" he asked. "Not really," we began, adding after a pregnant pause "Well, you SHOULD know." The lightbulb went off, a moment of pure pleasure as he realized he'd been fooled again.

Second course: French Onion Soup. We melted some butter and sweated down the sliced onions an hour in our fave old-fashioned Revere Ware stainless steel pan — a faithful servant of decades when fancier, trendier pans came and went — turning them occasionally till they turned "dark mahogany." Then you add white vermouth to the pan, turn up the heat and reduce liquid to a "syrup consistency." Add broth and cider and simmer 15 minutes. Full recipe here. Note: We made Pillsbury French bread, used Gruyere cheese and followed the Food Network's suggestion of an "optional" splash of cognac. Tuck said it was the best soup ever. 'Wish we'd taken more pictures, but we were too busy savoring the moment.

The rest of the menu, served in classic Cold Turkey "Petit Fours" mindful-eating style:

Brined Boneless Porkchops

Baked Stuffed Potatoes (Recipe to come)

"Broccoli Moose" (Recipe to come)

Candied Carrot Coins (Recipe to come)

Corny Cornbread Mini Muffins

Great presents, great food, great company. An evening to remember, and infinitely more soul-nourishing than tuning in to Red-Diaper Baby Barry Obama's "Sally Struthers of our national conscience" infomercial, the one that delayed the start of the World Series broadcast last night.

I prefer to read

"Two of my most handsome friends are now on video: Erik Svane and TigerHawk," writes Fausta. Above, Erik Svane explains Sarah Palin to his cat. It doesn't get any better. The cat steals the show, of course, but Erik isn't half bad for a human companion animal.

"I enjoyed the cat [in Erik Svane's inspired video above], but I seldom like YouTube. I prefer to read," imails Goomp. Same here. That is why Pajamas Media's awesome new online TV just doesn't float our boat. Especially as they charge for access. Some of it is free, and we've dipped in from time to time. Good stuff, but again, as Goomp says, "I prefer to read."

Is Obama a Marxist?

Tiny plucks a bag of "Dr. Pussum's Fancy Feline Elixir" from her catnip toy bowl atop the kitchen counter and takes a nip this morning before the sun is over the yardarm.

"The media bias is so egregious right now … it is almost exhausting to even point it out," says an Ace of Spades HQ blogger, who has some fun with the Obama campaign's latest thuggish attempt to stifle free speech so we don't have to. Having been all too aware of the egregiousness of media bias since our snail blogging days last century, we welcome the opportunity to try a little (almost) pure catblogging while others take the egregiousness ball and run with it.

Getting a buzz on. We love that glazed look after the crazed look of the initial encounter.

"What does this mean if there is an Obama administration, and they don't like the questions we reporters ask?" Fox News anchor and correspondent Eric Shawn is asking provocatively as he introduces Republican and Democrat operatives to test whether the story has legs. "It makes it look like Joe Biden can't handle basic questions, and by cutting off all access, it raises the question of what kind of White House would this be," comments GOP strategist Cheri Jacobus. When the Democrat came on, we clicked on "mute."

Drudge is headlining in red, all caps with a direct link to the Biden interview:

BIDEN GRILLED BY NEWS ANCHOR: IS OBAMA MARXIST?

YOU'RE PUNISHED: OBAMA CAMPAIGN CUTS OFF TV STATION AFTER TOUGH BIDEN INTERVIEW

'Looks like legs to us.

Update: Scott Ott has the skinny on the aftermath of the coming McCain landslide:

McCain Plans Chain of Obama Recovery Centers.

John McCain reportedly has already laid plans to heal the nation’s political wounds, and to offer new hope to countless journalists and other liberals whose faith will have been shattered by the defeat of Barack Obama at the polls on November 4.

Read the whole thing. It will make your day.

Update: Lots more day-making material and pure, unadulterated animal blogging at Modulator's Friday Ark #215, now boarding.

"Obama knows what con men have long known"

Babe keeps cozy and warm on a cool autumn day atop the TV tuner.

"Liberals love to poke fun at Sarah Palin's past history as a runner-up in the Miss Alaska Competition, but it is one of many of the features of Palin's life that I can truly identify with," writes blogfriend Laura Lee of The WIde Awake Café in a must-read autobiographical snippet that we herewith publish in full. Her insight illuminates, like nothing else we have read, why Sarah Palin drives Northeast Corridor Conservatives and their fellow travelers on the left side of the aisle to distraction:

I also was a runner-up in a local Miss Fort Smith competition, and what I learned in the whole pageant deal was how superficial some people are, how to answer both tough and dumb questions and how incredibly back-stabbing some females could be. I learned that beauty contestants were required to put vasoline on their teeth in order to smile. I learned that I swung my arms too much when I walked down the ramp. All sorts of discoveries about myself made me realize I was too much of an introvert to be comfortable out in the center of the stage. The main thing I learned though, was that the dream I had as a little girl was not, in reality, anything at all that I wanted.

The day before the pageant we were interviewed by a local radio station host. The questions were so asinine I found myself very impatient with the questioner. One of her questions was, "If you could speak to anyone you want to, living or dead, who would it be?" I thought a little while about it, and not wanting to insult any of my favorite artists, musicians, writers or relatives, I went for the One that I spoke to every night. I said, "God." Now, I think I would say, "Sarah Palin." Sarah Palin has been able, throughout her life, to take everything she has been through and make something better of it. She has stepped out in the center and taken the tough and dumb questions with grace and patience. She knows her guy, McCain. These two are a great team.

Grace under pressure, the very definition of courage. As we blogged three weeks back, "It's the character, stupid," quoting our own email response to Fox & Friends' viewer question "Which is more important in this election, character or an economic plan?":

While Obama's stealth radical agenda, Alinsky-style thuggish tactics and hysterical followers frighten me, I'm no big fan of McCain's either, what with Soros-seeded McCain-Feingold "finance reform" and McCain's scientifically challenged views on anthropogenic climate change.

Sarah, on the other hand, floats my boat.

McCain is the far lesser of two evils. Neither of the presidential candidates knows the first thing about economics, so all we have LEFT is character, and for a Beltway pol, McCain's got it way over Barack "Whichever-way-the-wind-blows" Obama.

Outside on the terrace, Tiny keeps the side yard safe for democracy.

Speaking of "Which is more important in this election, character or an economic plan," Thomas Sowell, as always, is not afraid to call a con a con in his latest:

People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute "the real issues" that we should be talking about, instead of Obama’s track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.

Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.

Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called “real issues.”

A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone …

Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is “pragmatic” rather than ideological.

But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.

Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well.

Pol and media spin about "the real issues" has always stuck in our craw. Thank you, Dr. Sowell, for explicating the real, real issues.

"I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb"

"In popular usage, SOS [Morse Code distress signal · · · — — — · · · or three-dits/three-dahs/three-dits] became associated with phrases such as 'Save Our Ship' and 'Save Our Souls,'" says Wikipedia. "These were a later development, most likely used to help remember the correct letters (something known as a backronym). Unattributed illustration from "The origin of the distress call 'May Day.'"

"I will go down with the McCain ship," writes Charles Krauthammer, stalwart on the field of battle as fellow Northeast Corridor Conservatives head for the nearest exit like democrats abandoning ship:

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years … I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings …

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the last year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism? …

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

"Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates," concludes Krauthammer:

Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

We quibbled with Charles — may we call you Charles? — that day last August when he told a Fox anchor, in reaction to McCain's VP pick, that the Arizona Senator should have picked someone "safe" like Fred Thompson. As we wrote then:

We LOVE Fred, of course, and our sis will remind us that we have a heart too soon made glad, but the Governor of Alaska gets our girls-just-wanna-have-fun juices flowing. Sarah, get your gun!

Like McCain himself, she can tell the lion from the lamb.

Update: Drudge links Krauthammer's piece, sixth item, central column. You go, boy!

Inside, outside

Tiny adapts to the changing scene as her favorite summer hideaway beneath the giant leaves of Hosta sieboldiana 'Elegans' (just off camera to left) begins to give way to the dried leaf cover of a New England fall. After Tuck had brought all the vacationing houseplants inside last weekend, the cats were quite surprised at the barrenness as they stepped out onto the terrace.

Summer, fall, winter, spring, cats always see things we don't.

Inside Baby Cakes basks in the afterglow of a mid-morning snack.

Note crumb of kitty kibble stuck to his beedy smile, Dracula style, just in time for Halloween.

Update: All animals all the time at Modulator's Friday Ark #214.

"When people actually meet her, they're blown away"

 

"Someone called me a redneck woman once, and you know what I said back? 'Why thank you,'" quipped the Divine Mrs. P at one of her rapturous rallies yesterday. She's on a roll, and media fuddy-duddies are falling in droves (see below). Above, statue by Rudolph Tegner (1873-1950) of Sarah Palin lookalike, woman warrior Goddess of Wisdom Athena, emerging from John McCain's Zeus's brow.

"I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful." 'Sounds like something we might have said, but it was "Saturday Night Live" Executive Producer Lorne Michaels (!), cited by the WSJs Daniel Henninger this morning. In fact, all but the most hard-boiled of Palin's critics are falling — like flies  — head over heels. First a few excerpts from Henninger's breath-of-fresh-air column, and then on to the Palin-ing of MSNBC:

The stoning of Sarah Palin has exposed enough cultural fissures in American politics to occupy strategists full-time until 2012. We now see there is a left-to-right elite centered in New York, Washington, Hollywood and Silicon Valley who hand down judgments of the nation's mortals from their perch atop the Bell Curve.

It seems only yesterday that the most critical skill in presidential politics was being able to connect to people in places like Bronko's bar or Saddleback Church. When Gov. Palin showed she excelled at that, the goal posts suddenly moved and the new game was being able to talk the talk in London, Paris, Tehran or Moscow. She looks about a half-step behind Sen. Obama on that learning curve.

Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," lives on the forward wave of American life. This week he gave his view of Sarah Palin to EW.com: "I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful. Her politics aren't my politics. But you can see that she's a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her."

Hephaestus (with axe, above, in detail from vase painting) was the "patron of all craftsmen, principally those working with metal [plumbers included?]," who "split the head of Zeus with an axe, from which Athena appeared fully armed," according to Encyclopedia Mythica.

We connected to Sarah, big time, the moment she sprung full blown into our consciousness in a Larry Kudlow interview we stumbled upon at YouTube two months back when rumors were rumbling that the Alaska Governor would be McCain's VP pick. As for the Palin-ing of MSNBC, we happened to catch what may have been a bellwether moment over there this morning. Former Republican Florida Rep and current "anchorman" Joe Scarborough has been unwatchable since he left "public service" and fell in with the Northeast Corridor herd at MSNBC. But today "Morning Joe" was transmogrified, going out of his way to praise the wit and wisdom of Sarah Palin, to the consternation of his horrified fellow anchors:

What we're finding is that when people actually meet her, they're blown away.

"Yes, she's pretty," sniffed the scowling anchorette beside him, attempting to trivialize the issue, but Joe brought out his big guns and left her biting the dust:

When Jack Welsh met her, he was extremely impressed, not with how she looks but with her intellect.

The diehards are still digging, of course. Digging themselves into a hole. Andrea Mitchell & Company are shocked, shocked at Palin's $150,000 clothing allowance [worth every pretty penny, in our view], and Brian Williams is deeply concerned that Caribou Barbie hasn't released her medical records yet [hoping against hope for something nasty, Brian?], but the Northeast Corridor holdouts' desperation speaks for itself.

Update: A totally excellent related post from Bird Dog at Maggie's:

I promise you that, if she had a "D" after her name, she would be a MSM heroine. Colorful and exotic. The Dems would find a way to make her "Josephine Sixpack" - "The fresh voice of the American worker from the American Frontier." Anybody who criticized her would be slammed as "classist" or "intellectual snobs" or "out of touch with real Americans."

Colorful and exotic, a fresh voice of the American Frontier, a real American. YES! So glad she's on our side.

Update: A mental ward full of voices we're glad are on our side at Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

Update II: Palin4America links years later.

Spread opportunity, not other people's wealth

Order your Joe-the-Plumber McCain/Palin T-shirt here!

Quotation of the day:

In this country we believe in spreading [not other people's wealth but] opportunity for those who want jobs and for those who want to create jobs that create wealth.

       — John McCain at a Bensalem, PA rally this morning

"Spread opportunity, not other people's wealth." We'll wear that!

Where has Peggy Noonan been?

"Even in this room full of proud Manhattan Democrats, I can't shake that feeling that some people here are pulling for me," quipped a crowd-pleasing John McCain at last night's 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner/Roast to benefit Catholic charities, pausing for maximum comic effect before turning with a melodramatic show of affection toward Senator Hillary's table to deliver a punchline that left HIllary (above) and assembled A-list guests rolling in the aisles:  "I'm delighted to see you here tonight Hillary." McCain's perfect comic timing and razor-sharp material left Obama's lame offering in the dust. Our fave joke of the night: "The press is really an independent-minded, civic-minded, non-partisan group … like Acorn."

"More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G's," writes an exasperated Peggy Noonan in the WSJ:

Hardworkin' families are strainin' and tryin'a get ahead. It's not only Sarah Palin but Mr. McCain, too, occasionally Mr. Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say "mom and dad": "our moms and dads who are struggling." This is Mr. Bush's former communications adviser Karen Hughes's contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that's too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it's all now the faux down-home, patronizing — and infantilizing — moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children — sorry, our kids — look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?

We couldn't agree more re the toe-curling G-dropping, moms-and-dads infantilization of the language that pollutes the public square [Who knew it was all Karen Hughes's doing? … We would have said Oprah!), but political figures as a model for adult behavior? No, Peggy, no. Again the Northeast Corridor Conservative in her starts off on the right foot re Thursday's debate [cf. our own post, "Obama unmasked"]:

[McCain] also scored Mr. Obama on his eloquence, using it against him more effectively than Hillary Clinton ever did. When she said he was "just words," it sounded like a bitter complaint. Mr. McCain made it a change: Young man, you attempt to obscure truth with the mellifluous power of your words.

… but then goes off the track in her conclusions:

From Mrs. Clinton it sounded jealous, but when Mr. McCain said it, you looked at Mr. Obama and wondered if you'd just heard something that was true. For the first time, Mr. Obama's unruffled demeanor didn't really work for him. His cool made him seem hidden.

"For the first time"? Where has Peggy Noonan been? We had Barack Obama's number way back in December of 2006, when the smooth-talkin' hope-and-changester, in the wake of Oprah's ecstatic endorsement, got away with calling us a racist while our fellow Americans from the other side of the aisle and their media enablers were being distracted by "thrills up their legs."

Update: What comes to mind? Check out Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities for your therapeutic needs.

Obama unmasked

We and the immediate blogosphere made note of Barack Obama's "creepy, smirky smile" that transmogrified his human face into "a bizarre theatrical comedy mask" every time John McCain mentioned an inconvenient truth about his opponent's words or deeds during last night's debate. Above left, the mask emerges in full at McCain's evocation of "Acorn."

When Senator Blinky (Confederate Yankee's words) met Senator Government (Senator Blinky's words), "Joe [the Plumber] made Senator Government squirm," writes Michelle Malkin re Obama's studied "I'm thoughtful and earnest and I care about you" body language as he exchanged words with John McCain during the third and final presidential debate at Hofstra U. last night. We liked an NRO reader's take:

First time I've seen Obama blushing and looking frustrated in a debate. McCain is getting under his skin.

Yup. As we wrote in a coda to our previous post, "Johnny's got Barry in the [OODA] loop," but:

Will Obamaniacs notice or be unnerved by it? Probably not, but maybe our fellow citizens who haven't yet made up their minds will.

How do you REALLY feel about your opponent?  Obama (from an Instapundit emailer): "Can't I just be president already?" McCain (loved and hated by the usual suspects for his politically incorrect sense of humor): "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Obam." Photoshopped screenshot above is meant to graphically portray the mental states of the two contenders during their two hours and twenty minutes of forced proximity.

"Blinky" McCain is not without a few facial tics of his own, of course — shall we chalk them up to aftereffects of his Vietnam prisoner-of-war years ? — but when it comes down to words, our man gets to the point three times faster than his opponent:

Obama: "I am a person who believes [fill in the blank]" = 6 words

McCain: "I believe [fill in the blank]" = 2 words

'Must be that "nuance" thing the Democrat elites are forever patting themselves on the back about. We ourselves have always been of the brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit school of intelligence assessment.