A crock

So there was Sara Palin campaigning for former running mate John McCain (R.AZ) on Friday, and NPR had a clip of her saying, "I'm a commercial fisherman, and we know that only dead fish go with the flow," followed by predictable cheers from the crowd.

You've probably heard that phrase before, but have you ever stopped to think about it?

It's a crock. In truth, all fish spend most of their lives going with the flow, and I daresay that many of them never go against it. Why do sharks and whales appear in northern water in the summer, but not the winter? Because they go with ocean currents, that's why. Even the salmon--the fish that we think of as going against the flow--goes with the flow on its way down rivers to the sea. And when it mounts that fight back upstream--impelled not by courage but by atavistic biological imperative--remember that it's going to spawn and die.

Yesterday, Palin and allies gathered in Searchlight, Nevada, hometown of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.NV). Strikes me that pretty much all of the countries where they could do that without getting hit with water cannon, tear gas or police batons are governed by the kind of social democratic governments that the Tea Partiers disdain. Maybe they should think about that.