Children are not adults and adults invited to another's home for dinner or a social gathering should not expect to have to interact with the hosts' children for the whole evening as if the children were simply a part of the group. (In my own case, my siblings and I were usually in bed by the time the grownups gathered for their get togethers.)

I think a big problem is that many parents today do not realize their primary job is not to befriend their children but to teach them how to function among other human beings, which means, to discipline them and train them to restrain their impulses and behave in an acceptable manner around others. This does not require corporal punishment; if my parents spanked us as often as three or four times in my entire childhood, I certainly can't remember it. However, we were all well-behaved in public and around others. At age eight or so we were told we must address all adults as "sir" and "ma'am," and we were taught that some behavior is simply not acceptable.

I have friends who have fallen into the too common trap: when their child misbehaves in public--or even at home--whining, fussing, crying simply because their immediate wants are not being satisfied, crawling atop the dinner table or wandering over to other diners' tables (in public), not keeping their hands to themselves, not sitting still and being quiet--rather than quell the child's behavior with a sharp "No!" or even a light slap on the wrist, (if necessary), they cajole their children, or beg them, "Oh, darling, please don't behave like that," "Oh, honey, what's wrong?" "Oh dumpling, don't pour the salt and pepper all over the table." And so on.

If children are not taught how to behave themselves, they should not be taken out in public or inflicted on guests in the home; it is exceedingly rude to expect others to suffer through the fruits of one's own lax parenting.

This just affirms what Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader and others have long said: we do not have a two party system, but a one party system, featuring a party that might be called the "corporatist" party. Why keep up the pretense of a real two party system? There are probably many reasons, but certainly it serves to maintain the illusion that we are actually a democratic republic, making decisions through the synthesis of different ideas and by voting for those ideas as represented by the parties who personify them. This pledge by the Dems to seek "bipartisanship" is a necessary ruse; they gained majority in Congress in 2006 by claiming they would remove the blank check from Bush, yet they proved only too eager to give him ever more of what he wanted. Now that they have gained even greater majority in Congress, as well as gaining the White House, how else will they be able to explain to a puzzled public--eager for change--why there seems to be very little change at all? Well, because of "bipartisanship," of course! The Dems won't be like the bad Republicans and use their majority to push through reform policies they claim to stand for...why, that's tyrannical! They will work with the Republicans to craft policy that is agreeable to all!

In short, we'll get more of the same.

I know it's premature to be so cynical, and perhaps the Obama administration will actually help bring about needed reforms, but given Obama's own stated opinions and votes, not to mention some of the old Washington hands with which he's surrounding himself, I think anyone expecting significant change will be sorely disappointed and disillusioned.

I loved WALL-E, but I can't really disagree with the argument that the ending is a cop-out. It's not that I think happy, hopeful endings are, by definition, cop-outs, or even that a hopeful ending to WALL-E had to be a cop-out. It's just that this particular ending was a cop-out, (even if we can understand the reasons this ending was devised).

Look, you have a race of torpid, vacuous humans who have become gelatinous blobs living on floating personal people-movers, spending their days sucking down junk and buying this minute's new rage. Yeah, I know...not that far removed from where we are now. And there's the rub: how many of our present-day fellow citizens would leave their EZY-KumfortBubbles, (i.e., their couches, situated in front of their 50" home theater screens),to go back to a life of hard, physical labor, where the acquisition of food and other necessities--forget about diverting baubles--requires more than just the whim to have it, and where the difficult labor will be never-ending?

The humans of WALL-E would have, in reality, demanded that the Ship's Captain get them spaceborne before the ship's engines had even powered down.

That said, I did love the movie. It's a picture of who we are, where we're headed, with a prescriptive ending showing what we must do (rather than might actually choose to do) to forestall the coming disaster that is our future.

Ms. Marcus can't possibly believe her own imbecilic "argument," so one must assume she thinks her readers (and by extension, American citizens) to be worthy only of contempt, to be mouth-breathing morons unable to see through such meretricious twaddle. This, of course, reflects Washington culture generally: those inside the beltway, those in the culture--politicians, lobbyists, newspersons, and so on--are the self-perceived elect, while the rest of us, we who reside outside their cloistered and "privileged" ranks, are merely vassals, unwashed and ill-bred brutes who must be ruled with a mixture of implicit threats and patronizing rhetoric. In short, they must see us as dogs, to be petted where appropriate, but held sharply to the leash.