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Posted by christopher on Tue, 08/19/2008 - 21:29 in

Quick roundup - saw Tropic Thunder last night and laughed my fool ass off. Incredibly funny.

daddYman passed a great NY Times article about Jon Stewart to me. Well worth reading.

TO the former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, Mr. Stewart serves as “the citizens’ surrogate,” penetrating “the insiders’ cult of American presidential politics.” He’s the Jersey Boy and ardent Mets fan as Mr. Common Sense, pointing to the disconnect between reality and what politicians and the news media describe as reality, channeling the audience’s id and articulating its bewilderment and indignation. He’s the guy willing to say the emperor has no clothes, to wonder why in Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “It’s 3 a.m.” ad no one picks up the phone in the White House before six rings, to ask why a preinvasion meeting in March 2003 between President Bush and his allies took all of an hour — the “time it takes LensCrafters to make you a pair of bifocals” to discuss “a war that could destroy the global order.”

And James tipped me off to this excellent opinion piece on why McCain's similarities to Bush in terms of intellectual rigor are insanely frightening.

One after another, McCain's answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has -- virtually none.

Where are John McCain's writings exploring the vexing moral issues of our time? Where are his position papers setting forth his careful consideration of foreign policy, the welfare state, education, America's moral responsibility in the world, etc., etc., etc.?

I'm so sick and tired of hearing that Obama has no substance. The man wrote 2 books himself - as opposed to McCain who had a few more books ghost written for him. He has an entire web site full of policy positions and statements (as does McCain - though McCain has been skimping out on areas I worry about, like tech) and generally offers more substantive responses to questions than his opponent.

He has plenty of substance. And I like a lot of it. Let's put McCain and Obama in a room and shower them with questions about the Constitution and see what happens.