Month: July 2008

A nice compilation of steadicam artistry from Laboratory 101. My personal fave:

Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling, feminist Obama supporters, write against the Democratic party advocating an abortion reduction program, but suggest other actions:

We need not wait for either the Democratic convention or the election to move forward on reducing the need for abortion. Two perfectly good bills are languishing in Congress. One, the Prevention First Act, was introduced by Sen. Clinton; the other, the Reducing the Need for Abortion Initiative by Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Rep. Tim Ryan, a pro-life Democrat. These bills need to move forward and perhaps be consolidated. (The Clinton bill does more for family planning, and the Ryan-DeLauro bill more for women who want to continue pregnancies.) Sen. Clinton is in a perfect position to make that happen, and we will work with her on that goal. Moving these bills before the election will give us a yardstick by which to measure members of Congress’ commitments to meeting women’s needs while recognizing their rights.

Barbara O’Brien parsed Obama’s shift on abortion over the weekend, while Ramesh Ponnuru looked at his clarification yesterday.

Dan Gilgoff notes how electorally potent Obama’s fusion of the social Gospel with personal moral conservatism could be:

How much of this mixing is due to Obama’s experience in the black church, which emphasizes both the Social Gospel and the need for personal salvation? A lot of it. But how ironic is it that the black church legacy of stressing personal salvation might be Obama’s ticket to appealing to white evangelicals this fall?

It’s not my kind of Christianity. But it sure is Christianity.

Tofu causes dementia?

This attack on the Second Amendment cannot stand:

"In Connorsville, Wisconsin, it is illegal for a man to shoot off a gun when his female partner is having an orgasm."

"Hewitt said that on his radio show he has been careful to play book clips in their entirety, not just in snippets that can give the wrong impression. It’s possible that the audio clips could be used in political ads, but that’s not his intention, he said," – from Politico’s story on using audiotapes of "Dreams from My Father" to rally conservative base opposition to Obama.

A project at the RCA show:

Sonny Bunch on Grand New Party advocating highway widening:

I’m all for reducing traffic congestion. For the first 15 months or so after I graduated from college I lived in Stafford County, VA, and commuted into DC. Roundtrip, it was four hours. Every day. Slightly shorter when Congress was out of session; slightly longer when there was a massive pileup on I-95. I’m terribly sympathetic to the idea that widening traffic lanes will reduce that congestion and reduce carbon emissions to boot. Except that, well, it’s kind of unworkable.

For starters: where are you going to put these extra lanes? It’s not simple NIMBYism in the DC area–the I-95 corridor is packed with homes and businesses on either side of the highway for long stretches. We’re talking about relocating thousands of homes and businesses if we really want to stretch things out horizontally. I think we’d probably be better off with expanding the rail system than the highway system, but that’s neither here nor there: the details of Ross and Reihan’s highway plan are very tricky.

But you wouldn’t know it from the book because on this issue (and most of the other sweeping ideas they propose), no real details are offered. It’s easy to wave a magic wand and say “Widen the highways!” or “Remove the ethanol subsidy!” It’s another thing entirely to make it happen. Again: I’m sympathetic to almost every idea they propose, but to make them happen we need a detailed plan.

Fred Barnes evaluates Obama’s moving to the center:

Barack Obama’s tack to the center is quite clever for three reasons (and maybe more, but three is all I could think of). One, it may cause moderate and centrist voters to feel more comfortable about voting for him. That’s the big one. Two, he’s better off being attacked by John McCain as a flip-flopper than as an unrepentant liberal. And three, he gave up practically nothing in the process. The tack to the middle has been mostly a fuzzy feint that didn’t lock him into any new positions.

They’re learning.

Rod Dreher sees an Aristotelian conservatism in the new Pixar classic. It’s a post with all the usual Dreher qualities, and well worth reading:

"Wall-E" says that humans have within themselves the freedom to rebel, to overthrow that which dominates and alienates us from our true selves, and our own nature. But you have to question the prime directive; that is, you have to become conscious of how they way you’re living is destroying your body and killing your soul, and choose to resist.

"Wall-E" contends that real life is hard, real life is struggle, and that we live most meaningfully not by avoiding pain and struggle, but by engaging it creatively, and sharing that struggle in community. It argues that rampant consumerism, technopoly and the exaltation of comfort is causing us to weaken our souls and bodies, and sell out our birthright of political freedom. Nobody is doing this to us; we’re doing it to ourselves. It is the endgame of modernity, which began in part with the idea that Nature is the enemy to be subdued — that man stands outside of Nature, and has nothing to learn about himself from Nature’s deep logic.

Like Rod, I keep thinking about the movie. It draws together a lot of amorphous feeling right now – the gnawing sense that modernity has begun to undermine the natural conditions of its flourishing – and focuses it. The two most powerful factors, to my mind, are the confluence of destructive technology and religious terrorism and climate change with highly unpredictable repercussions. It is hard not to feel a Babelian quality about our current moment; and Rod’s crunchy conservatism speaks to it powerfully.