conversated and perpetrated by David Ham.

President Obama Addresses the House Democrats Conference

And he KILLS. He's funny and earnest and natural, and, refreshingly, he demolishes all the counter-arguments to the stimulus package that we've been hearing from the GOP on what Obama calls "the cable chatter." I wish he'd talk to America with this kind of verve and passion, instead of the bland, avuncular tone he uses in the weekly YouTube addresses.

Video on C-SPAN

Via TPM.

Life at Wal-Mart - Boing Boing

BB guest blogger Charles Platt got a job at Walmart, and his experience was quite different from Barbara Ehrenreich's:

The job was as dull as I expected, but I was stunned to discover how benign the workplace turned out to be. My supervisor was friendly, decent, and treated me as an equal. Wal-Mart allowed a liberal dress code. The company explained precisely what it expected from its employees, and adhered to this policy in every detail. I was unfailingly reminded to take paid rest breaks, and was also encouraged to take fully paid time, whenever I felt like it, to study topics such as job safety and customer relations via a series of well-produced interactive courses on computers in a room at the back of the store. Each successfully completed course added an increment to my hourly wage, a policy which Barbara Ehrenreich somehow forgot to mention in her book.

Heroism Amid Tragedy

A man killed two people at a Tennessee church this weekend, using a shotgun hidden in a guitar case. The gunman had left a four page letter at his home, describing his frustration at not being able to get a job because of "liberals and gays."

But listen to this:

"I don't think he expected to leave there alive, and were it not for the hasty actions of some of the other people in the sanctuary there may have been more fatalities," Owen said.

The suspect fired three blasts before being subdued by congregants.

Killed was Greg McKendry, 60, a church member who apparently stood in front of the gunman and shielded others from a shotgun blast.

That's an astonishing act of heroism by Mr. McKendry.

Surrender, Dorothy

The world writes open letter to McCain:

Pointing to polls that show Obama leading McCain 94 percent to 6 percent everywhere on the inhabited globe except the United States, where most polls give Obama a narrow one- to three-point lead, the entire world suggested that Americans might not be sufficiently informed about the U.S. election. "Look, this isn't funny," said a world representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "You've got one candidate who has a reasonably sane and comprehensive foreign policy combined with detailed knowledge of American domestic affairs, and another candidate who isn't always sure which country he's talking about and whose domestic policy consists of telling people to stop whining. Why are you even throwing this open to a vote? Are you people out of your minds?"

Freakies Cereal Commercial

Via Coudal on this morning's tweets. We had a bunch of refrigerator magnets from this cereal when I was a kid but I never knew what they were. We certainly never got any cereal as glamorous as this; cinnamon Life was about as freaky as my mom would get for our breakfast cereals. But I recognized several Freakies immediately. The Internet!

The Work, Not The Person

OK, so John Gruber posts this hilarious screenshot to Flickr of someone's new iPhone app, which provoked a storm of snarky comments, which provoked this lengthy response from the company's CEO, which prompted this thoughtful essay from Ryan Singer at 37signals, which finally prompted these closing remarks from Mr. Gruber:

And a postscript regarding the tone of some of the comments in the Flickr thread: Constructive criticism of the design itself is, of course, OK. Gentle ribbing is OK. Personal insults are just wrong, though. Criticize the design, not the designer; the work, not the person.

Well put, sir.

Shortwave

Wow, wicked cool--Shaun Inman's new Shortwave lets you search popular sites from your browser or iPhone, without having to first navigate to that site. Click the Shortwave bookmark, enter a keyword and your search term ("g sasquatch" will google "sasquatch" for you), and you are taken direct to the search results page. Whip smart and elegant.

More at ShaunInman.com, which he has designed into the web design equivalent of a $2500 suit.

Via Jason Santa Maria.

Jesse Helms Obit in The Guardian

The Guardian gives Jesse Helms' life the full airing it deserves, in a treatment we are unlikely to see imitated in the States.

He became one of the most powerful and baleful influences on American foreign policy, repeatedly preventing his country paying its UN contributions, voting against virtually all arms control measures, opposing international aid programmes as 'pouring money down foreign rat holes', and avidly supporting military juntas in Latin America and minority white regimes in Southern Africa.

In domestic politics he denounced the 1964 Civil Rights Act as 'the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress', voted against a supreme court justice because she was 'likely to uphold the homosexual agenda', acted for years as spokesman for the large tobacco companies, was reprimanded by the justice department and the federal election commission for electoral malpractice, and compiled a dismal personal record as a slum landlord.

Wall-E and the 4th of July

Frank Rich on Wall-E:

Indeed, sitting among rapt children mostly under 12, I felt as if I'd stepped through a looking glass. This movie seemed more realistically in touch with what troubles America this year than either the substance or the players of the political food fight beyond the multiplex's walls.

While the real-life grown-ups on TV were again rebooting Vietnam, the kids at Wall-E were in deep contemplation of a world in peril--and of the future that is theirs to make what they will of it. Compare any 10 minutes of the movie with 10 minutes of any cable-news channel, and you'll soon be asking: Exactly who are the adults in our country and who are the cartoon characters?

Penny and I saw Wall-E yesterday, and it was wonderful.

Christopher Hitchens Submits to Waterboarding

Having written a piece for Slate that drew distinctions between "torture" and "extreme interrogation", and having gotten a lot of flak for it, Christopher Hitchens agreed to submit to waterboarding. The title of his piece about the experience for Vanity Fair summarizes his conclusion.

I was completely convinced that, when the water pressure had become intolerable, I had firmly uttered the pre-determined code word that would cause it to cease. But my interrogator told me that, rather to his surprise, I had not spoken a word. I had activated the "dead man's handle" that signaled the onset of unconsciousness. So now I have to wonder about the role of false memory and delusion. What I do recall clearly, though, is a hard finger feeling for my solar plexus as the water was being poured. What was that for? "That's to find out if you are trying to cheat, and timing your breathing to the doses. If you try that, we can outsmart you. We have all kinds of enhancements."

Via BB.

How Safe Marriage Must Feel, With Guardians Like These

This week, some Republican Senators reintroduced the Federal Marriage Amendment, which, of course, "protects" the institution by making it illegal for gay couples to marry. But check out who's sponsoring it:

But the funny part is looking over the list of the 10 original sponsors. Most of the names are predictable — Brownback and Inhofe, for example — but there are two others whose names stand out: Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho).

Yes, two of the principal sponsors of a constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage include one far-right Republican who hired prostitutes and another far-right Republican who was arrested for soliciting gay sex an airport men’s room.

Via TPM.

Finally, War Crimes Prosecutions for Iraq

Boris Johnson, recently elected mayor of London, describes his impending prosecution for war crimes in Iraq.

Is it Bush or Rumsfeld or Cheney? Have they found a member of the American administration to take the rap for the disgusting scenes in Abu Ghraib?

Is it Blair, brought to book after the Commons failed to impeach him? Is it Alastair Campbell, unrepentant sexer-up of the dodgy dossier? No, my friends, we are not so lucky. None of the major players is going to be arraigned for the Iraq disaster, and the long arm of the law is instead reaching out - incredibly - for me.

I am informed by my friends in the Metropolitan Police that I am shortly to become the one and only Western politician to be brought to justice for crimes committed in Iraq. My transgression? I have somewhere in my possession a cigar case that once belonged to Tariq Aziz.

Via MeFi.

Brand New Worlds To Conquer

Gruber posits--correctly, I think--that the big story of today's iPhone 3G launch is the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. But bigger than this, I think, is that Apple is getting better and better at presenting everything they make as part of a platform.

Look at the iPod. It's not just a device, and never was: it is, broadly, how digital music works. (As an aside, I am always impressed to look back at things Apple does and see what a long view they have. For example, iTunes, the Mac application, was released in January 2001; the first iPod wasn't released until nine months later.) By itself, the iPod would have been problematic, like it was for all the other MP3 players of the day; you'd have to get the music off the CDs, store it on your computer in some way, and handle sync to the device. But at Apple, design is how it works. You're not buying shiny-new-device, for its own sake; you're buying listening-to-digital-music. iPod is actually iTunes + iPod + iTunes Store.

The AppleTV is a platform that has been slower out of the gate, and is still beset by some problems, but that could yet become a success. The platform they're aiming at here is enjoying-digital-video. It's more difficult because movie and TV files are gigantic, even with today's ever bigger and cheaper hard drives, and thus harder to store, download, and transport. But as a way of buying, watching, and storing movies, iTunes + AppleTV + Mac is not such a bad way to go. The only thing keeping me from buying it is price and selection--I get more from my $13.99 Netflix account, in selection and quantity, than I could from iTunes. But they could add movies, get the studios to agree to lower prices (*cough*) or open up the AppleTV--an API that would talk to Netflix or Blockbuster, say--and bring me into the fold.

And now there is MobileMe. Despite its unfortunate branding, this is a much better value than mac.com/dotMac ever was, and a more compelling platform. If you think of it in the terms of its predecessors--it's online access to all your stuff!--it may not seem like a big step up. But if you look at it as a platform, it's a good bit more attractive. It's All-My-Computer-Crap-In-One-Place. With the introduction of two key features, push sync and Exchange support, you now have, on your phone:

• a phone
• all your contact info
• your music and TV shows
• your home and work calendars
• your home and work email
• your photos
• all your Web bookmarks, and a browser to view them in

All synched automagically. And that's just the AMCCIOP stuff--that's not even counting all the video games and Google maps with GPS and new App Store gewgaws.

With today's new offerings, Apple now has a music platform(iPod/iTunes), a video platform (don't laugh, AppleTV could be big and strong one day!), and an everything-else platform, which is the Mac itself.

And what about the Windows machine at work? You can access your MobileMe apps through Windows Safari (released, what, a year ago?), your documents through MS Office for Mac or Apple's own iWork apps, and now your work email and calendar through your iPhone. The tectonic plates for a work platform are drifting inexorably together.

Tom Waits Press Conference

Via MeFi.

The One That Got Away

Last night, biologist PZ Myers tried to attend a screening of Expelled, a creationism propaganda film. Myers and Richard Dawkins appear in the film, and both have criticized it, saying they were duped into appearing in the film and were told that it would be entitled "Crossroads" and would be a debate on creationism vs. Darwinism. More in this thread at MeFi.

Anyway:

I was standing in line, hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn't going to cause any trouble.

I went back to my family and talked with them for a while, and then the officer came back with a theater manager, and I was told that not only wasn't I allowed in, but I had to leave the premises immediately. Like right that instant.

I complied.

They did, however, allow his wife, daughter, and guest to attend the film. His guest was Richard Dawkins.

Via DF.