FreePAC Arizona today, next week Florida!

Your humble correspondent

I'm in Phoenix, Arizona today for FreePAC, sponsored by FreedomWorks. We have a great day ahead of us, including grassroots training, a preview of Atlas Shrugged II, and presentations by Matt Kibbe, Kristina Ribali, Deneen Borelli, Dana Loesch, Glenn Beck, and many more.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter @rumpfshaker and the hashtag #FreePAC for all the latest news throughout the day, as well as the official FreedomWorks twitter accounts, @FreedomWorks and @FWforAmerica.

Atlas Shrugged Movie! OMG OMG OMG

One of my favorite experiences of CPAC was attending the "BlogBash" on Thursday night and seeing the world premiere of the trailer for the new Atlas Shrugged movie.

Official movie poster. The movie premieres on April 15th, an appropriate date!

I've loved Ayn Rand's book for a long time, and often said that it should be required reading for elected officials. (Apparently FreedomWorks agrees with me, but Congressman Keith Ellison does not.) It has puzzled me that no one had adapted this great book to film before now, but I can see how it might be challenging, especially today.

In 1949, Hollywood managed to get Ayn Rand right, with the film version of The Fountainhead. However, Rand herself wrote the screenplay, King Vidor was the director, and Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal excelled in the starring roles. I highly recommend adding it to your Netflix queue or catching it the next time it's shown on Turner Classic Movies.

Atlas Shrugged is admittedly a denser and more complicated book than The Fountainhead.  It's Rand's longest book and the last one she published, with, let's face it, a theme that is a bit more complicated than the standard "boy meets girl" schlock that Hollywood is accustomed to producing now. Without Rand to guide the screenwriting and production, I honestly did not have very high expectations for this new movie.

Well, my pessimism was misplaced. The people responsible for bringing this film to the big screen have created a wonderful, amazing, and powerful work. This is a top-quality, lush, visually-stunning production. Judge for yourself, and view the trailer here:


YouTube| AtlasShruggedPart1 | Atlas Shrugged Trailer

We were also shown a few selected scenes from the movie. The actors appear very well suited for their roles, even the minor characters...I was a huge fan of the TV show Friends and the casting of Christina Pickles (she played Ross and Rachel's mother) as Mother Rearden, was spot-on. I have to admit getting slight chills upon hearing certain lines brought to life ("Who is John Galt?") and seeing Dagny Taggart wearing a bracelet of Rearden metal.

The movie is currently planned to be a trilogy. Part 1 premieres on April 15th, 2011.

For more information about the Atlas Shrugged Movie:

Official Movie Website

Atlas Shrugged Movie on Facebook

@_AtlasShrugged on Twitter

Atlas Shrugged Part 1 YouTube Channel

Atlas Discarded

Hello everyone, I'm hanging out at a Starbucks near Capitol Hill, killing some time before I head back to the airport and fly home to the warm(er) weather.  I'm having a wonderful time in Washington but my thin Floridian blood is not a fan of the wind here.

I've had some meetings in the Capitol Hill area the past few days, and spent some time wandering around the hallways of the congressional office buildings.  If you haven't visited before, there are three huge buildings, Cannon, Longworth, and Rayburn, that are right next to each other that house the offices for all the Members of Congress, the committees, and of course lots and lots of administrative and support staff.  Underground tunnels  connect the three buildings. 

Anyway, the midterm elections have resulted in a lot of changes...new Members of Congress coming in, defeated Members packing up and going home (bye bye, Alan Grayson!), other Members changing offices due to new committee assignments/advancements in seniority, etc.  The hallways in Cannon, Longworth, and Rayburn look like there's some kind of insane garage sale going on right now, furniture stacked up along all the walls. 

The building maintenance staff is going nuts trying to coordinate moving everything around.  I shared an elevator with a guy who was pushing a cart with a huge wooden desk that was some kind of antique...he mentioned that he was stressed out because they had told him that the Congressman had spent "thousands of dollars" on it...not sure if that was to buy the desk or to ship it to Washington, but either way, this poor man was really having a hard time fitting it in the elevator without banging it on the walls and he looked about ready to cry.  Not sure which Congressman it was, but he had better appreciate that desk!

Besides all the furniture moving, a lot of offices are doing some housecleaning.  I saw several tables set up with books, office supplies, etc. with signs indicating that the items were being discarded so they were free for the taking.  Being a bookworm, I stopped to look at the stacks of books to see if there were any interesting titles, and at one table in the Cannon Building, I saw this:

If you call yourself a tea partier and you haven't read this book, shame on you.

...a brand new copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged!  Score!  My copy was my mother's from college and it's definitely seen better days...the cover is held on with tape, what can I say, it's been well-loved.  I was happy to get a new copy of this great book, and the fact that I could say I picked it up in the Congressional offices was just an added bonus.

On the Metro ride back from Capitol Hill, I opened up the book and just had to laugh when I saw the inside cover:

Of course Atlas Shrugged would get thrown out by a Democrat!  Representative Ellison doesn't even have the excuse that he's leaving office (the voters in Minnesota's 5th District re-elected him to a second term last month). 

The fact that a Democrat is discarding the book that is viewed by many as the the "bible" of limited government says a lot, IMHO.  Maybe if Ellison and more of his Democratic colleagues had taken some time to study this book, they might have learned some useful ideas and not suffered, as President Obama put it, such a "shellacking" at the ballot box.

I'm going to forward this on to FreedomWorks.  I'm very interested to see what they think about it.  ;-)