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Politics is a serious business that focuses on trivial, often absurd, issues. Today, the Obama camp is making a big deal over McCain owning "seven houses" (a number of which are apparently condos). A guy whose household income is between four and five million a year accusing a guy whose household income is between six and seven million a year of being rich and elitist in response to charges by the other side that he's rich and elitist illustrates how silly the whole thing can be.

But I do agree with Bile that there is something unsettling about a half-brother living in that kind of abject penury, when for the price of some arugula Obama could drastically change his life. Not highly relevant to the campaign, but a bit off-putting.

Not everything unpleasant McCain endured in 'Nam was torture, and he understands that. But he was tortured way, way, way beyond the current anything-rough-is-torture histrionics we've been hearing. He had severe injuries, including bone fractures and bayonet wounds, at the time he was captured, and the Vietnamese refused to treat them, instead beating him violently even in that severely injured state while they interrogated him. That's not waterboarding, or saying mean things, or playing loud music. He lost fifty pounds, had a crushed ribcage and barely survived. He still can't raise his arms above his head. The U.S., on the other hand, has waterboarded a grand total of three people, all top al Qaeda operatives who were refusing to divulge information about terror cells and plots, and each with a doctor present, after layers of bureacratic approval were secured. People can disagree over whether waterboarding is torture, it may very well be, but it's not the same thing as what McCain went through. No journalist would ever consent to what McCain went through just to write an opinion piece about the experience.