On Tuesday night, as Ron Paul celebrated his second-place finish in New Hampshire, he was joined by what appeared to be a giant, standing behind him during this speech. Turns out, the guy isn’t really all that tall — only six-foot-five:

For some reason you looked more gigantic in those photos. Were you standing next to a midget?
That guy was pretty short who was standing in front of me. He’s not a midget, but he’s pretty short. That’s why this whole thing is very funny to me. I was going to make up some crazy story that I was found in an orphanage and all that, I’m nine feet tall, but no. I’m just six-foot-five, the guy in front of me was short, and it just happened to be.

(via)

In the NY Times today, Anand Giridharadas takes a closer look at Sarah Palin’s remarks from Indianola, Iowa, over the Labor Day weekend. He concludes that, perhaps, we’re seeing the emergence of a new strain of political thought from Gov. Palin. In the past, she’s espoused a muddy mix of Tea Party fiscal conservatism, along with standard conservative talking points on issues like domestic oil drilling and a pro-Israel foreign policy. When most people were paying attention, they found Palin’s views pretty unremarkable. But now, Giridharadas observes something different:

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

Might positions like this gain traction, even with liberals?

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

As I read this piece, I was reminded of the 2008 VP debate between Biden and Palin, in which the tiniest germ of this line of thinking was beginning to develop:

One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars. We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt. Let’s do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card. Don’t live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we’re taking personal responsibility through all of this. It’s not the American peoples fault that the economy is hurting like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say never again will we be taken advantage of.

So what’s going on here?

I’ve read this profile of Fred Rogers at least twice before, but every time I come back to it, I’m humbled and impressed by his vision for a kinder, gentler world and his love of children:

Once upon a time, a man named Fred Rogers decided that he wanted to live in heaven. Heaven is the place where good people go when they die, but this man, Fred Rogers, didn’t want to go to heaven; he wanted to live in heaven, here, now, in this world, and so one day, when he was talking about all the people he had loved in this life, he looked at me and said, “The connections we make in the course of a life–maybe that’s what heaven is, Tom. We make so many connections here on earth. Look at us–I’ve just met you, but I’m investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can’t help it.”