Author: Andrew Sullivan

Virginia Postrel says they are all related:

Policy wonks assume the current rage for wind farms and high-speed rail has something to do with efficiently reducing carbon emissions. So they debate load mismatches and ridership figures. These are worthy discussions and address real questions. But they miss the emotional point. To their most ardent advocates, and increasingly to the public at large, these technologies aren't just about generating electricity or getting from one city to another. They are symbols of an ideal world, longing disguised as problem solving. You can't counter glamour with statistics.

Glamour always contains an element of illusion. (The word originally meant a literal magic spell.) By obscuring some details and heightening others, it offers an escape from the compromises, flaws and distractions of real life. It shows no bills on the kitchen counter, no blisters under the high heels, no pimples on the movie star's face. In those glamour shots, wind power seems clean, free and infinitely abundant. Turbines spin silently and sometimes appear barely taller than a child. The wind blows constantly and in exactly the right amount—never so much that it piles up unwanted power and never so little that it requires backup supply. The sky is unfailingly photogenic, a backdrop of either puffy clouds or a brilliant sunset; the landscape is both empty and beautiful; and there are no transmission lines anywhere.

Austin Bramwell isn't convinced.

The new normal.

"I have to ask: America, is this a bluff? It's okay if it is. It's fine. I'll be relieved.

You know how, when you really want a puppy, you begin by asking for a wildebeest? Your mother gets nervous as you bring home book after book on Wildebeest Care and Feeding and Heather Has Two Wildebeests and Are You There God, It's Me, Wildebeest. You build a miniature wildebeest habitat in the backyard. You make powerpoint presentation after powerpoint presentation insisting that this is what the family needs. "How about a puppy?" your parents plead. "Sure!" you say.

Or when you want a car, you start by saying you're going to tattoo Richard Nixon's face over every exposed inch of your body? Or when you want to explain that you're living with your boyfriend outside of wedlock, you start by saying that you're moving to Appalachia with an itinerant flute player.

America, is this your way of saying you'd like to elect Mitt Romney?" – Alexandra Petri, Washington Post, on the Palin farce.

Alas, it is not a bluff.

Russell Brand's take on smug celebrity singers:

Sodomize intolerance indeed. And don't miss his alter-ego's other hit, "African Child".

"If the [North Koreans] start anything, I say nuke ‘em. And not with just a few bombs. They’ve caused enough trouble — and it would be a useful lesson for Iran, too. We can’t afford another Korean war, but hey, we’re already dismantling warheads," – Glenn Reynolds.

The Fix digs into Palin's and Huckabee's respective numbers:

The base of support for Huckabee and Palin is readily apparent, and for both of them, it starts with born-again evangelicals. The two of them combine for 46 percent of that vote, compared to just 26 percent for Gingrich and Romney. Palin and Huckabee are also the top two vote-getters among women and people without college degrees… It's hard to see Palin having a path to victory that doesn't include Iowa or South Carolina, and both of those early states happened to be Huckabee's strongest in 2008.

I can't help but feel that Huckabee's liberal record, especially on fiscal matters and crime, makes him very unlikely this cycle. How do you run in this climate having pardoned a man who went on to kill police officers? 

(Hat tip: Goddard)

Room For Debate takes on farm subsidies. Here's Chuck Hassebrook, executive director at the Center for Rural Affairs:

The most effective thing Congress could do to strengthen family-size farms would save money by putting a real cap on subsidy payments to the largest farms, which use those subsidies to drive smaller, neighboring operations out of business. 

A reader writes:

Million of options (enjoy the Bjork onslaught), but I immediately thought of this '90s house classic by Crystal Waters, "Gypsy Woman". It features the lyric, "She's just like you and me, but she's homeless" (It's house music, get it?) and a beautiful video that could only have been made in the early '90s.

Ah, yes. And there was nothing weirder in the early 1990s than being at a gay disco as countless shirtless muscled dudes waved their hands in the air to bring home the tragedy of female homelessness.

Sometimes gestures mean more reality:

[I]n a world of sheer rationality where the brain didn’t confuse reality with symbols, bringing peace to Israel and Palestine would revolve around things like water rights, placement of borders, and the extent of militarization allowed to Palestinian police. Instead, argues Axelrod, “mutual symbolic concessions” of no material benefit will ultimately make all the difference. He quotes a Hamas leader who says that for the process of peace to go forward, Israel must apologize for the forced Palestinians exile in 1948. And he quotes a senior Israeli official saying that for progress to be made, Palestinians need to first acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and to get their anti-Semitic garbage out of their textbooks.

Mark Kleiman wants to raise the alcohol tax:

Tripling the alcohol tax would, in addition to the revenue it brought in, reduce violent crime and auto fatalities by something like 5% each: that’s about 800 fewer murders, 10,000 fewer rapes, and 1700 people not killed on the highways. The total impact on health is harder to compute, but heavy drinking kills about 100,000 people a year; if tripling the tax, which would raise the price by about 20%, led to a 10% reduction in volume, that would certainly show up in morbidity and mortality statistics, and in health-care costs.