The Obama campaign is using Google to squash damaging and untrue rumors. By bidding on search terms like "Barack Obama birth certificate," or "Barack Obama as Muslim" Obama makes sure that he gets a word in. At the top of search results for these terms, up pops sponsored links to Obama's "Fight the Smears" website created to debunk the rumors specifically.

McCain strategists have been using Google as an offensive front for some time, bidding on words like "Viet Nam," "US Naval Academy," "POW," and "World War Two." The hope is that people who search those terms will see a McCain for President Ad, visit the website, and ultimately donate to McCain.

Currently, twice as many unique visitors go to Barack's website, compared to McCain's — do you think the race to the White House goes through the Google?

Candace Bushnell, the author of the book Sex and the City, just signed a deal with HarperCollins Publishers to write a two book series titled The Carrie Diaries, which will be all about Carrie's high school years. Bushnell has always been interested in writing about Carrie's formative years, before she became the sex columnist we all grew to love, before she meet her three best friends, and before she entered into her tumultuous life in the Big Apple.

While I'm all for keeping Sex and the City alive, I'm not so sure how I feel about these books being geared towards teens. As Bushnell states: "Carrie in high school did not follow the crowd -- she led it," but what kind of a lesson does that teach? High school is hard enough as it is, and if these readers look to Carrie as an inspiration, they might be let down as she was still as lost as ever decades after high school, regardless if she was the most popular girl in school. Perhaps I'm reading too far into this, but tell me your thoughts on The Carrie Diaries. Would you be OK with your teenage kids reading these books or do you think most of the readers will be adult fans of the show?

Source