Month: September 2010

Jason Zengerle's Rand Paul hit piece has some important reporting. For example:

Ron Paul, in addition to his extreme views on the federal government, has been a harsh critic of the Republican Party's "military adventurism," and in the past Rand has faithfully echoed his father's views. He opposed the war in Iraq, once characterized the September 11 attacks as "blowback for our foreign policy," and scoffed at the threat of Iranian nukes. And yet here he was in Washington, seeking out a secret meeting with some of the Ron Paul Revolutionaries' biggest bogeymen. At a private office in Dupont Circle, he talked foreign policy with Bill Kristol, Dan Senor, and Tom Donnelly, three prominent neocons who'd been part of an effort to defeat him during the primary. "He struck me as genuinely interested in trying to understand why people like us were so apoplectic," Senor says of their two-hour encounter. "He wanted to get educated about our problem with him. He wasn't confrontational, and he wasn't disagreeable. He didn't seem cemented in his views. He was really in absorption mode."

(Hat tip: Green)

Alyssa Rosenberg contemplates "an action-movie 3D adaptation of Paradise Lost":

I just hope that Legendary Pictures keeps a couple of things in mind with this adaptation. First, most of the characters are boring. Adam and Eve are hopelessly naive and lovey-dovey. God's a bit of an impenetrable jerk. And the Son just sort of sits around and glows obnoxiously. If it takes aerial warfare to spice things up, fine. But cast a seriously phenomenal actor as Satan, because you're going to need it. Second, don't skimp on the special effects. This isn't some cheap-angels-attack-a-diner-Legion-style penny-ante conflict. This is the big one.

Amy Davidson lands several blows:

[National Review], striking a pose of judiciousness, says that it “cannot say with any confidence” that same-sex marriage would cause “illegitimacy to increase”—though it goes on to imply that it might. But wouldn’t it, actually and almost instantly, cause legitimacy to increase, as more parents of more children were able to marry? The distastefulness of the writers’ claim, repeated through the piece, that opponents of same-sex marriage care about children while gays and lesbians are just interested in themselves and their “desires” is tempered only by its absurdity. If a lesbian couple raising a child got married, after all, then two of those single mothers who so concern National Review might be dealt with in one blow.

Jacob Davies takes a trip:

Burning Man is sort of nuts, and sort of like the future. Nobody has a job. There's nothing you can buy but everyone sort of has what they need anyway. Physical conditions suck. But everyone is really, really happy anyway. Things get done by volunteers, usually, mostly. Tattooed, unshaven people who you would probably give a wide berth on the street are expertly driving enormous cranes and forklifts, or rigging pyrotechnics. Women in miniskirts and pasties are working with tools you have no idea how to use. Everywhere people are just doing exactly what they feel like doing.

Did I mention that they're all really happy? They're happy, I think, because nobody is telling them what to do, and it turns out that when nobody is telling anyone what to do, everybody is really, really nice. People are nice. OK, there are jerks. But it demonstrates that under the right conditions – and not necessarily conditions of great comfort or leisure – people can be really nice. They can be really happy. They can get big things done. And they can do much of that – not nearly all, but much of it – without the trappings of modern industrial life – jobs, salaries, competition, status displays, credentials, advertising, branding, the rat race.

I would think, ahem, they are all happy because they're so high they'd be making love with a cactus if it didn't hurt so much. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, if it floats your boat and you have plenty of neosporin lying around. But please. I love all of this, have a deep and abiding respect for bohemianism and a Hayekian love of the miracle of this sudden human community. I know many very (temporarily?) sober people help make this happen and not so-sober people who are among the sweetest people I have ever met. In fact, I'm sure many are way cool, mellow and reveal that being a hippie – even a temporary one – is probably far closer to the Christian ethics Jesus actually preached than most evangelical churches.

But ignoring the pot, ecstasy, shrooms and acid that make it what it is is like discussing a Tea Party convention as if there were no white people there.

(Image via TDW)

Jon Walker analyzes the latest Prop 19 polling.

Doug Mataconis spreads the blame around:

[T]he Democrats could, and should, have kept the immigration bill separate from a bill dealing with the budget for the Department of Defense. Republicans, on the other hand, are resting their opposition to proceeding forward on repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell on the phony issue of a Joint Chiefs of Staff study that is concerned not with whether to repeal the rule, but how that repeal will be implemented once it becomes law. Considering that the language of the repeal specifically says it doesn’t go into effect until after the study is completed, the objections of Senators like John McCain on that ground are entirely without merit.

An awesomely bad product from the 1980s.

Douthat maintains his skepticism.