There were several flags on stage and thousands in the audience. There was even a flag ceremony--the presentation of colors.

I'm so glad I watched on CSPAN so that I got to hear Kerry's speech. He was fantastic.

The start of Obama's speech: To Chairman Dean and my great friend Dick Durbin; and to all my fellow citizens of this great nation; With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States. Let me express my thanks to the historic slate of candidates who accompanied me on this journey, and especially the one who traveled the farthest - a champion for working Americans and an inspiration to my daughters and to yours — Hillary Rodham Clinton. To President Clinton, who last night made the case for change as only he can make it; to Ted Kennedy, who embodies the spirit of service; and to the next Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, I thank you. I am grateful to finish this journey with one of the finest statesmen of our time, a man at ease with everyone from world leaders to the conductors on the Amtrak train he still takes home every night. To the love of my life, our next First Lady, Michelle Obama, and to Sasha and Malia - I love you so much, and I’m so proud of all of you. Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story - of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren’t well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to. It is that promise that has always set this country apart - that through hard work and sacrifice, each of us can pursue our individual dreams but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams as well. That’s why I stand here tonight. Because for two hundred and thirty two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women - students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors — found the courage to keep it alive. We meet at one of those defining moments - a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more. Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit card bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach. These challenges are not all of government’s making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush. America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this. This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work. This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he’s worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news. We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes. Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: “Eight is enough.†~~~ Me again, asking sincerely, Where's the ridicule?

Agreed. I'm very interested in the size of the crowd that turns out today to hear McCain announce his running mate. My daughter will be there. . . . . . with a fellow Obama supporter.

It's the image analogy to McCain's visit to the German restaurant (while Obama was in Berlin).

So if you only homeschool for four years it doesn't count?

He was preschooled.

From the study (a pdf, unfortunately): This shift in mind-set in the informed group was accompanied by remarkable improvement in physiological measures associated with exercise. After only 4 weeks of knowing that their work is good exercise, the subjects in the informed group lost an average of 2 pounds, lowered their systolic BP by 10 points, and were significantly healthier as measured by body-fat percentage, BMI, and WHR. These were small but meaningful changes given the state of health the subjects were in, especially considering that the change occurred in just 4 weeks. All of these changes were significantly greater than the changes in the control group. These results support our hypothesis that increasing perceived exercise independently of actual exercise results in subsequent physiological improvements.

Speaking as an INTP (there's emotionally constipated for you!), why wouldn't it be scripted? Doesn't seem logical to expect anything else. I loved listening to Caroline and Ted and Michelle. I loved Jimmy's Katrina film. I'm not going to get much reading done this week.

What should the legal consequences be? Prison? Monetary fine? Community service? And for whom? The doctor? The mother? The father who may have insisted she terminate the pregnancy?

Has someone actually said this? It sounds like a strawman to me.

U.S. Mayors Hunger Survey. Discussion of methodology included within survey.

"Sen. Biden's oldest son, Beau, a captain in the Delaware National Guard, is slated to leave for a tour of duty in Iraq in October." According to the Wall Street Journal.

Registration form here contains Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Unaffiliated and Other boxes to select from. If someone attempted to register, say, for the Mickey Mouse party, they'd wind up registered as an Unaffiliated. Of course, you can vote in North Carolina on election day without being registered at all. You can vote on a provisional paper ballet. It won't be counted or anything, but you've voted. :001_smile: Those who go the early voting routine can register when they vote. Their votes count.

I was registered as a Non-Affliliated for many years. . .

Not even as a voter, Crissy?

Triple Crown. Another Secretariat fan here.

Your situation reminds me A LOT of the one I have with my older sister, straight down to having a father still at work at 80 and a mother with Alzheimers. She was not diagnosed (by a GP, because she thinks psychiatrists are "dumb and stupid") as bipolar until she was in her early 60s, following the deaths of our parents (in '02), despite a suicide attempt in her early 20s and a history of brief employments and living off my parents outside her decade-long marriage to a much older man (a wonderful man who died abruptly about 20 years ago). I'd pegged her as histrionic personality disorder after taking an abnormal psych class in college because I assumed if she were something MAJOR, like bipolar, the doctors would have figured that out while she was in the mental hospital. We own our parents' house together, where she lives (our parents deeded the house to us in the 80s, retaining lifetime rights). Sometimes she says she would like to sell the house, move somewhere else. Even if I gave her my half, I can't see how she'd have enough to live on, since all the money she has is social security, which pays for her food and the meds she rarely takes correctly, and a bit an aunt left her when she died a few years back--I can never get a straight answer out of her about how much she has, but she had to get an attorney earlier this year to get her out of a default judgement that had been brought against her when she ignored a lawsuit--pitched all legal papers straight into the trashcan--brought against her because of a thousand or so messages she'd posted on a local message board. (And once the judgement was dropped, and she'd run her retraction on the board for a month, she started posting in the same vein that had gotten her into trouble the first time!) We'd been paying her utility bills for years, but are currently making her pay them due to some lies and emotional manipulation she put us through back in the spring--and the fact that she said if she got sued again my husband and I could pay her legal bills. (Uh, no.) I assume she will develop Alzheimers earlier than our mother did and I will be expected to make decisions surrounding her care--although at the moment all I'm legally in a position to do is contact her doctor and tell him when I suspect she's off her meds-- and will then need to empty the house and basement of the tremendous amount of junk she's bought at yard and estate sales to resell on ebay (fat chance) so that the property can be sold to pay for her care. Your brother, on the other hand, reminds me of a good friend's older brother--the brilliant genius who won the scholarship to the big name private university who wound up working in fast food in NYC after college and coming home to small town NC to keep the dental appointments made by his mom at the dentist's office he'd always gone to. He moved back to NC to live in the family homeplace after their mother died, worked menial jobs unworthy of his genius potential, and it wasn't until my friend forced him to the doctor (one more day and he'd've died, the doctor said) and they found out he had diabetes, that the doctor also said the words "obsessive compulsive disorder." What would his life have been like if he'd been meds for OCD all his life? What would my sister's have been like if she'd received a better diagnosis in her 20s than that of being "spoiled and immature"? It's all very well and good to be on the outside saying any particular person should be responsible for his or herself, but how can they make the decisions a more normal person would make when they've never seen life from that perspective, when they can't see it from that perspective? There just aren't any answers in situations like these. (I apologize for incoherencies in the above. I'm just coming off a major migraine that Imitrex couldn't touch and I haven't yet regained verbal equilibrium.)

From the O.E.D.: communism: 1. a. A theory which advocates a state of society in which there should be no private ownership, all property being vested in the community and labour organized for the common benefit of all members; the professed principle being that each should work according to his capacity, and receive according to his wants. b. spec. A political doctrine or movement based on Marxism and later developed by Lenin, seeking the overthrow of capitalism through a proletarian revolution; = MARXISM-LENINISM. (Freq. with capital initial.) 2. a. Applied to any practice which carries out this theory in whole or part; e.g. that mentioned in Acts ii. 44 seq., as practised in the church of Jerusalem, or that prevailing in monastic communities. spec. The communistic social order established in Russia after the revolution of March 1917, and later in certain associated countries; = BOLSHEVISM. (Freq. with capital initial.) Also transf. b. Co-ownership of land. 3. Community of feeling; the spirit of a community. rare.

Troops donate more money to Obama

It's been reported that military troops have donated more money to Obama than to McCain--troops serving abroad have donated almost six times as much to Obama.

I vote at the polls, shortly before voting officially starts--since I'm precinct judge I get to play canary in the coal mine in determining whether the equipment's working properly. I've already had two anxiety dreams this summer regarding the upcoming election; while it makes a nice template change from having to find the building where I'm to take the final in the class I didn't know I was registered for, I am worried about how swamped the polls are going to be this fall. If anyone has the chance to do early voting of any sort, I would recommend it. Otherwise, you're likely to be standing in line for a long while with a few snarly individuals who never imagined anyone else might turn out at the same time to vote that they did and you can rest assured they're not going to be quiet enough to let you get in a bit of extra reading while you wait.

I don't see how kicking threads into a Back Alley or Underground section will do anything to lessen the amount of whiny backstabby behind-the-scenes nonsense that Susan says she has to deal with. If people can't behave maturely now, why provide a mechanism that will allow them to behave even worse?