Month: July 2008

A reader writes:

I am an HIV positive professional who has been studying and working in the US for the last 9 years.  I found out that I was positive three years ago while processing my US green card.  Because the green card process was being handled in Ecuador (I am Ecuadorian), the doctor – assigned by the US embassy in Quito – reported my HIV status to the US embassy. This is how I found out about the HIV travel ban and the problems that this law brings to those like me that have this disease. After that, I have not been able to leave the US for fear that I will not be able to re-enter the country.

However, in my case, I ran out of time already. I am scheduled to leave the US in a couple of weeks after 9 years of living in NYC. My life is here and it kills me that I need to leave all behind due to this stupid policy that treats me as if I were a criminal or a terrorist. I have been hoping that this will get resolved in time so I would have the opportunity to stay in the US. or, even, if I leave, I would be able to come back. However, it seems that it won’t happen soon enough for me.

If you want to help end this ban – HIV is the only disease that is legislatively designated as a bar to even entering the US – email your senator. Details here.  My waiver runs out next March.

"Total chaos" update:

All of this intrigue breeds discouragement among even those former McCain associates who do not dispute the notion that voters now might be getting an early glimpse of the messy, unstructured way in which a McCain White House might be managed. They are hard-pressed to explain why Mr. McCain tolerates this — or encourages this — or why he has trouble cutting ties with people who have not served him well over the years.

“I can’t answer the why,” said John Weaver, who was one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers before being forced out in a shake-up last year. “It is just that way and for his own sake, he needs to finally, firmly decide where he wants to take this campaign.”

Schmidt’s now in charge! No he isn’t! Murphy’s coming back! No he isn’t:

"Before he left for Mexico and Colombia, McCain informed Murphy that when he returned, there would be changes in the campaign, that Davis would be demoted and that Schmidt would assume some operational control of the campaign, and that he wanted Murphy to serve as his chief strategist, as he currently didn’t have one," a friend of McCain’s told me. "Murphy didn’t say no," the McCain friend went on. "Murphy expected that to happen." When I asked why it didn’t, the McCain friend replied: "As usual, chaos took over."

A reader gently points out that my favorite one-take tracking-shot scene was a) not a steadicam as such but a handheld camera and b) inspired by the following shot in "I Am Cuba" as early as 1964. It is an astonishing sequence (much beloved by Scorsese, apparently), ending, as with Paul Anderson’s scene, underwater in a swimming pool. Check it out (the soundtrack is not the original):

Multi-touch computer technology just got even cooler.

Noam Scheiber summarizes Michael Scherer’s and Michael Weisskopf’s article in Time on the candidates’ gambling habits:

Short version: McCain is a high-stakes craps player who loves the pure, adrenalin-pumping, rush of the game. Obama is an exceedingly low-stakes poker player who sizes up his odds methodically and rarely loses money.

Well: he needs to given his own view of religion in politics. Here’s the president’s citation from Jefferson in his speech at Monticello on July 4:

In one of the final letters of his life, he wrote, "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be — to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all — the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government."

Here’s the original:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

"We concede that he’s a patriot and person of good character," – Charlie Black on Obama. Concede?

A photographer’s strobe gives a violet sheen to this translucent juvenile roundbelly cowfish off the coast of Kona, Hawaii. Also known as the transparent boxfish, the roundbelly cowfish has two short horns in front of its eyes. By Chris Newbert/Minden Pictures at National Geographic.

                    

Ruffini writes:

The 2008 election will polarize around Obama in the same way that 2004 polarized around Bush. That’s because Obama is a cultural icon. But so are Tom Cruise and Britney Spears. The danger to this celebrity strategy is that it’s rendering Obama’s trump card — partisan contrast and "Bush’s third term" — irrelevant. Once someone is knocked off a pedastal as high as Obama’s is, the fall is so hard that it doesn’t matter that "the other guy is worse."

Keep throwing shit at the horse, Patrick. But it didn’t work for the Clintons and it doesn’t seem to be working for McCain. Since the general election started, it’s been a walk-over for the Democrat, in my view.