Pun Salad

… with charms like yours for me:

• The VFW has dissolved its political action committee, which had, among other things, endorsed my own Congressperson/Toothache, Carol Shea-Porter.

  I doubt her signs advertising the endorsement will go away, though. They're pretty funny, proclaiming that she's "Endorsed by…"

  VFW

  Political Action Committee

  The fine print is pretty easy to miss when you're driving by.

• Weekend Barackrobatics:

  President Barack Obama said Americans' "fear and frustration" is to blame for an intense midterm election cycle that threatens to derail the Democratic agenda.

  "Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama said Saturday evening in remarks at a small Democratic fundraiser Saturday evening. "And the country's scared."

  I can't do better than this comment from Paul Mirengoff at Power Line, but I'll summarize: tone-deaf, arrogant, condescending, self-serving psycho-babble. I would imagine that not one person at the "small" ($900K fundraising) shindig asked him why people should be more "scared" in 2010 than when they elected him in 2008.

  Also see Taranto for his observations.

• At Reason, Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie make a good point on anonymous political speech (currently subject to frantic demonization by Democrats), one you've also read here:

  As with many political firestorms, the current one about "dangerous" anonymous speech generates more heat than insight. Anonymous speech is fully in the American grain but it also comes at a price. When the source of political speech is not known or disclosed, voters tend to discount it, or at least look for corroboration elsewhere. Which is exactly how it should be. And if you don't in the end trust voters to make informed decisions, then all the mandatory disclosure in the world can't help them.

  Video at the link.

• Iowahawk envisions the Obama Administration as an old-school text adventure. Simply brilliant.

• I laughed at this until tears came down my cheeks, but Mrs. Salad thought it was just stupid. What do you think?

As I type, it's #181 on IMDB's Top 250 Movies of all time. That's a little strong for me, but to be fair, I merely watched the 2-D version at home; the 3-D theatrical version might have been really awesome.

It's pretty good, though. The story revolves around a Viking village sorely beset by a variety of dragons that steal sheep and kill the occasional villager; not onscreen, though. An oddball lad, Hiccup, has few physical skills for dragonfighting, but is blessed with an ingenious and creative soul, and attempts to demonstrate this by constructing a weapon to bring down the deadliest of all dragons: a Night Fury.

He winds up merely wounding it. And when he tracks it down, he can't bring himself to finish off the beast. Instead, he … well, see the title. This sets up an obvious conflict with the exterminatory feelings of the folks back in the village. But it's aimed mostly at the kiddos, so you can pretty much guess how it comes out.

Plot, voice talent, animation quality are all great. Dreamworks continues to do a very good job of being not-quite-Pixar. As a mild conservative, I should point out Jonah Goldberg's column on the movie too.