I would say that the line is crossed as soon as someone starts speaking. If any child of a candidate steps up to a microphone to say anything or gives a speech to a small gathering, that would change things from being private. Being visible doesn't make that change since the kids have no choice there.

I'll just go back to the original (far as I can tell) reference to "urban" areas to make an observation on that sub-topic.


Perhaps the distinction you're making here is to some extent "urban" vs "urbane"? I believe that's definitely happening at least subconsciously elsewhere in the thread.

Meanwhile, trying to define "urban" gets into a real quaqmire since different definitions exist for various uses, not to mention all the various sub-categories such as "urbanized area", "metropolitan statistical area", not to mention lesser used terms like "conurbation" (which you could apply with regard to groupings such as MSA's fairly often).

Ultimately what I think you were really getting at was really more about mindset than a geographical or population density term.

Well, the Obama kids held some microphones and talked on-stage. At least his youngest daughter knew the difference between Kansas City and St. Louis. :D

an article on fact checking from some of the speeches:

Attacks, praise stretch truth at GOP convention - Yahoo! News

Biden reiterates that critiques of the Palin family are off limits:


McCain to give big speech on rebuilt stage - Yahoo! News

that article is great. i particularly like the last two massive lies.

kudos - classy move by biden there

I question the intelligence of the writer of that article for even including the Huckabee comment that you said was a 'massive lie'. It was a ridiculous overexaggeration that was meant to draw laughs and little more. It was never intended to be fully truthful, but rather to point out that Biden's presidential bid failed miserably. A writer who didn't detect the dripping sarcasm needs his sense of humor examined.

He's washing his hands of the issue while allowing the media and blogsphere to do the dirty work for him. Must have been a tough move to make.

intelligence or humor, which one needs to be examined?

How can anyone, right or left control the internet or blogosphere?

it was the right move to make. and for you to pretend that a republican in the same position wouldn't have done the same thing is ludicrous. in fact, any politician would have done the same thing. just saying it's classy of him (and obama) to come out and say that again.

it's more than mccain and the other republican candidates did during the whole "wright issue" IIRC.

I dont think those two issues equate.

Her church and his church do and the statements of their respective preachers, do, but not church to children.

i could argue differently for hours -- that both are essentially "private matters" and that insofar as someone wants to argue that the statements of someone at the church he goes to demonstrate what kind of person he is or what kind of leader he would be, the conduct of, and parenting of one's own children offer an equally insightful (and honestly probably more meaningful) view of what kind of person they are, and in particular of what kind of leader they would be. Something along the lines of: being a leader of a country has far more in common with being a mother/father (note the distinct lack of gender-bias) of a family and raising your children than it does with sitting passively in a seat for an hour a week listening to somebody else you have literally no control over.

Good thing we never saw Hilary in this outfit.

if that's real....then at least she's even patriotic in her swimwear!


and now the thread just became NSFW

What better?

Palin patriotic undies or Skydog patriotic undies?

is that person behind her smoking drinking a beer? are they underage? sure looks to be a yes to both questions - i'd be curious

Wow, this didn't take long. Rasmussen poll already showing a backlash to the media's treatment of Palin and her family. I predicted earlier in this thread that it could be an issue for Democrats. Just didn't think the backlash would occur this quickly............

Poll: 51 percent say reporters are trying to hurt Palin - Yahoo! News

Also, a comment in regards to the picture of Palin a couple of posts above. I'm sure there will be tons of photoshopped photos like that in the coming weeks. If the left wing bloggers and internet supporters think that will help their candidate's cause, they're sorely mistaken. That kind of attack to paint her as a white-trash gun-toting beauty queen is going to fall flat on its face. Women will see it as an attack on them and degrading to their sex.

is that poll a rolling average?

MBBF: The voice of downtrodden women everywhere.

I know its fake(if snopes is anything to go by) but I think its funny anyways.

Politically speaking, I don't think that how good of a father someone is or is not has ever been a criteria for any of the previous presidential elections. It only becomes one now because Palin is female. Being a political moderate, I can only speak for myself, but how good or bad of a parent someone is , really is not one of my top concerns in choosing who I am going to vote for.

Discussing what groups or organizations that the candidate willingly chose to be involved with however leads to a discussion of actions displaying their ideology. This includes churches that they choose to attend as it is the candidate's choice to choose which church they go to, what that church's fundamental belief is and by attending that particular church it leads to an action displaying not only what that candidate also believes, but what might shape their future goals.

I think enough has been said about Obama's church in the past so won't really go into more details here on that. As far as Palin's church, it really is a non-issue with me as well. She goes to a very ultra-conservative religious right type of church. The things that have been reported as having been said by the pastor of that church is no different then what I hear many other of the far religious right having said. (The Kenneth Copeland types). It obviously is not mainstream, but it also should not be suprising or shocking.

Just as with Obama's pastor having said things that might be shocking to "white america", I would only happen to guess that it is something that is fairly often said in ultra-radical left leaning groups as well. Unless you are a part of that life, you probably don't hear it often so it becomes shocking when it suddenly gets alot of spotlight.

Like it or not, but it is very obvious that Palin is the VP choice of the far-right, her political leanings, her social leanings and her religious leanings all echo that. None of what her pastor says should be a shock for anyone. If they are suprised by it, then they just haven't read up enough on the radical-right leaning religious groups.

Somewhere in between these two radical groups is the other 65% of the american population that unfortunately has to choose between radical right and radical left. :)

Could you please stop posting sexist pictures of our (R) VP nominee please. You need to post pictures of Biden by the pool to be fair.

Some key points you left out


Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.

In the new survey, while 24% are more likely to vote for Palin due to recent news coverage, 19% say the opposite and 54% say the stories have no impact on their votes.

35% believe reporters are providing unbiased coverage.

Among unaffiliated voters, 49% say reporters are trying to hurt Palin, while 32% say their coverage is unbiased. Only five percent (5%) say reporters are trying to help her.

I think we can all come together, across party lines, and agree that no such pictures should be posted anywhere ever.

Damn, who did I just rub one out to then?

I heard it was your mom.

Alaska looks pretty warm and lush in that picture. :)

elizabeth - american flag bikini rifle on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

That was a pretty good Photoshop, though.

The real tragedy of this picture is, the dude looks like he's drinking Schlitz...

In the interest of being fair...





(and yes, I suck at photoshop but it was quick work)

Obama drinks Schlitz? That does it. I am throwing my vote away on a third-party candidate.

Article about fundraising today in the Wall Street Journal. While the majority of the article details a new fundraising campaign by McCain, there are a couple of interesting notes regarding the Obama war chest.

1. It appears that 2/3rds of Obama's original $150M in funds has already been spent. Cash on hand in the Obama campaign is now less than what McCain has.

2. The Obama campaign is spending more money than they are taking in at this point.

McCain Top Fund-Raisers Set New Target - WSJ.com

Wow... that is interesting. It seems Obama's greatest asset in the campaign may not be what it was assumed to be.

They'll get their ATM machine fired up again for the last stretch of the race. No way the people they've stoked up are gonna quit now. The last 45 days of this race are gonna be nothing like we've seen before.

I think it is telling that the Dems are targeting $220 million, while the GOP is looking to get $100 million.

Boy there are a lot of assumptions in that thar article...

1) Funds for the primary had to be spent before the end of the convention. It's not a surprise that he spent that much in July.

2) Remember those numbers are as of July. They had to get to zero in primary funds as of the end of August and I'd bet they pre-paid a lot of organizing costs to cover the whole election so that general election funds could be better targeted.

Obama/DNC won't have a huge advantage on McCain/RNC in funding, but any story on spending has to mention the legal restrictions on primary vs. general election money.

dola. Without comment.

Does every penny have to be spent by election day for candidates? What happens if they have left over money?

My head just exploded.

in shock that he said that, or because you think it's much-ado about nothing? please clarify

I applaud him for this. The family...especially the under-age members of the family should be off limits. Hopefully more people answer questions in this way so the reporters stop asking the questions.


This equivocation sucks. He said the right and proper thing. Anything anyone else is going to do is on them and belongs in a separate criticism.

I had no idea that had a negative black connotation (my complete ignorance thought if anything, it's something said about rich white folks). But I did find it as like the fourth listing on dictionary.com, so apparently it is something that's bad to say.

in common usage it pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the n-word. as in "uppity n*(#$#"

I'm in the same boat as you and I grew up in the south (that is if you consider the metro-Atlanta area "south" which many wouldn't.) I had always viewed the word "uppity" more along the lines of hmmm.. how Hugh Grant acts in every one of his boring movies.

I guess I would view calling someone "uppity" as an insult and something to be offended at being called.. just never viewed it as racial at all.

Is that from movies or music, or where exactly does this usage usually get used out of curiosity? It obviously is from something that I Have very little exposure to.

uppity negro