And needs no further reply. I don't think anyone has even suggested abuse in that family--well, except throwing them into a spotlight that is way too hot for them for your own ambition(and ruining their Labor Day weekend on top of it).

But what I do still wanna know is why the engagement was kept secret, when it would have pre-empted ALL of this. I know engagements are shameful things people often try to hide, but really...

Fair enough. So they found some other way to pressure him into this.

I'm sure it'll be a happy, happy marriage! Marry in haste, enjoy in leisure. Oh wait, that's not how it goes...

I'm beginning to wonder if McCain or Palin made any recent trips to Hawaii. Remember guys, TIKI IS TABOO!

Or maybe if there is a God, he/she/it got disgusted with the GOP around the time of Terry Schiavo and has been giving them wrath ever since. Hmm.

I was born and raised in the south(my family goes back to 1800 there) and half my family is "redneck". I can make as many snarky remarks about the piggy-skinned folk as I like.

McCain made sure personality and her "private" life, and decisions therein, were the main reason to vote for her. This was a sop to the religious right.

But every detail of the narrative has gone Bizarro at the slightest bit of scrutiny.

They based this on lies, and this is what happens to liars. And if the GOP were on the other end of this, they'd have hammered the Palins till their brains exploded.

So no pathetic, hypocritical, prissy pleas for consideration. This is the political world now. The only way to turn it back into something else is to play dirty till the ones who made it this way, the GOP, are gone. Not to be nice. Tell me what the GOP ever did that deserved "nice" treatment now!

...so we can be sure shotguns will be allowed.

BTW, if Bristol was already going to get married, why didn't they mention she had a fiancee right off? Seems that would have lightened things for the GOP considerably.

Oh right--they just got the idea Saturday. Around when they realized they could send Levi to jail if he didn't go along.

For instance, the "facts" of Trig were put front and center at the time of the announcement. Therefore, they are an issue because she made it one. When she's doing that to appear to stand for "family values" and the truth of her family's life is that of most people, rather than an ideal that can preach, the ploy deserves to be knocked down.

Republicans stand from a holier-than-thou position till they get caught with what they do in secret--which is nearly always poetically opposite to their public stands--at which point they try to claim they're just as "weak" as everyone else and so forth.

They use the position they pretend to in order to deny a great deal to the rest of us. They should not be allowed that power.

And it was Sarah Palin who did her family a disservice by so blithely agreeing to become McCain's running mate.

...but Breathed has been ill, I believe, and nobody will be drawing Opus if he's not.

My hope is that he's drawing Opus for a very, very long time. But this strip is a little chilling.

It's all right you took so long to talk about Obama's speech and were so easily distracted by the lightweight stunt-nominee Palin, Joan. You have priorities to consider.

But what a misleading headline! "Fighting Barack Obama." You do realize that this phrasing seems to imply the work "against" should be in there, right? I'm just curious, given that you're an experienced journalist.

Or does Salon: the Parody subcontract your headlines now?

Jeezus.

So Salon is dedicated to raising two kinds of awareness nowadays: pork and McCain. Which is redundant, of course.

And even David Frum has figured out this was, for McCain, a bad idea.

http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2VhOWE0N2VkOWI3MDdlODRlZWE4ODljMDc2NjliZDk=

Actually, I'm glad he did it. It assures his defeat.

Her son is going to a war in which he could die, but she hasn't thought much about it. Well, I guess with so many kids one doesn't make much difference.

I notice too that this makes James Dobson happy. So, PUMAs, time to see: are you really this gullible? And in Hillary's words--were you for HER or for the country?

I mean, the personality cult, it's a bit Republican, innit?

He met her once, last February, and he makes this decision?

He might as well have given the slot to Bush's caddy. Oh wait, that's him.

Oh, and she's a Buchanan backer too.

Three days of lots of people doing web research on her will turn up a lot. We already know she's a reactionary, corrupt, inexperienced, and ignorant, and that McCain barely knows her and picked her because she's a woman and (the bone to the media)good-looking.

By next week, she WILL be Harriet Miers.

Oh my god, so there IS a Hillary supporter who can be fooled by all this and only has to be dangled a female candidate.

Besides everything else, she also appointed a known sexual harasser. Viz:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/palin-appointed.html#more

Really? This is a candidate for Democratic women? So it's not the issues that affect women that you care about but the mere fact of her gender?

Just join the GOP, sell Salon to the NRO and get it over with. My god.