Manifestly Unserious

Campaigns have their ads, their polls, and their tactics, but at the end of the day, credible people who care about the country know that this is more than just a theatrical game — the future of the nation counts more than the future of a candidate. Those who take affairs of state seriously may take cheap shots, shade the truth now and then, and run the kind of conventional campaigns we’ve all grown accustomed to, but honorable Americans of character don’t gamble with the nation’s well-being. They know there are lines that can’t be crossed for expediency’s sake, no matter how strong the temptation.

…

When I think about the respect that John McCain had worked so hard to develop, the stature he’d taken years to cultivate, and the reputation he’d built his career on, it’s breathtaking to see him throw it all away. If there’s a more complete collapse in modern political times, from hero to clown, I can’t think of it.

We’re poised to learn a great deal about Sarah Palin, but we’ve just learned even more about John McCain. He’s fundamentally unsuited for the presidency.

In all the discussion of John McCain’s recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of “long-time standing” that victims of Bush’s torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely “enhanced interrogation.”

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects. Feel safer?

The worst of this is that keeping your tire pressure at the appropriate levels will save as much or more money as off-shore drilling. Turns out the oil companies just want a lock on land leases they’re more likely to get while Big Oil Bush is still in office.

Rotten Tomatoes: Wall-E
Rotten Tomatoes: Wall-E Forum
Pixar Planet: Blog
Pixar Planet: Wall-E Forums and review links
Pixar Blog (unofficial)

I thought this was a pretty fair, somewhat negative review. It seems to capture the sentiments of most people I know who came out of seeing Wall-E with mixed feelings:

Once WALL-E and Eve arrive on the ship, the story doesn’t have much distance to travel, but ways are found to stretch out the experience - and that’s where “WALL-E” goes wrong. The film loses touch with the poignancy and profundity of the Earth scenes and becomes gimmicky, slapsticky and cute, with a glossy sheen in contrast to the grit of the opening.

However, the movie does right itself, and the power of WALL-E as a character, the poetic figure of the robot drawn to human splendor, remains powerful throughout - and Pixar’s loveliest creation.

Well actually this review was fairly positive overall. Not sure what my friends thought. The only rotten reviews on RT are pretty non-specific in their criticisms or just had an anti-Pixar axe to grind anyway.

Here are some forums threads with interesting comments:
RT Official Anticipation/Reaction Thread
CHUD Post-Release Thread

To kick-off Convention week in a spirit of unity, the DNCC, in conjunction with the Democratic Party’s Faith in Action (FIA) Initiative, will host an interfaith gathering on Sunday, August 24th, beginning at 2:00 PM at the Wells Fargo Theater located in the Colorado Convention Center.

This is the first time a celebration of this nature has been part of a Democratic National Convention and is symbolic of the Party’s desire to bring multiple communities together under its “big tent.” The gathering will include clergy of different faiths, Party leaders, elected officials and local community leaders. Speakers and musical guests will be announced later this summer. The event will be open to the public.

Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it’ll be great to supplant the hold the religious right has on the Republican party by doing this. As long as on the liberal side of things we can come to the same side on various issues like poverty, the environment, evolution and the civil liberties, while maintaining our various religious beliefs I think this can be a good thing. The whole “culture of life” thing is amazingly short-sighted and a naked attempt at divisive politics, when life involves so much more than just making it out of the womb. But the devil is often in the details, I wonder if the means by which different people can come to believe that we are stewards of the earth and each other can affect how such policies are carried out.