This has actually become really painful to watch.

Mathematically, (if you believe the math) Hillary Clinton has been all but eliminated from this race. Yet she seems to have dug a political grave for herself and appears to be dancing on it. Let's be clear: nominating contests have gone longer than June. That's a fact. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June after having the nomination wrapped up. But one thing's got nothing to do with the other. There's no reason to even mention that horrific fact. It just seems to me that anyone else would have thought to leave that out. There's just no reason to go there. Leave alone the wound that's clearly never quite healed, it's not relevant to the discussion. So why bring it up, not once, but twice? By what psychotic calculus is she continuing to do this when her campaign, by all accounts (save perhaps her own) is finished?

I was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt after her idea about giving women and little girls something to shoot for came out. Barack Obama has two little girls. He said some very gracious things about Hillary after winning Oregon. Now, I fear this is less about inspiration than it is about naked ambition snuffing out any kind of perspective or common sense and leaving nothing but this cold, bitter, and cynical sense of history, and the idea that she could somehow capitalize on it. Given the recent news about Sen. Ted Kennedy's illness, one could hardly imagine a more tasteless, shallow, and downright nasty thing to say. Some are saying that her candidacy, to say nothing of her political career has suffered a perhaps mortal wound. That may yet prove true. No argument she could make to the superdelegates would hold much water after this. For all the arguments she might make about being singled out because she's a woman, this moment shows that it's not about that. Not this time. This is one time political calculation bit her hard in the ass, and now she is in full self-destruct mode. It's painful and sad to watch.

The Wright story goes on for WEEKS. Barack Obama has to fall on his sword for comments that are absurd and arguably paranoid. Comments that black people understand even if they don't completely agree with them.

McCain is NEVER EVEN ASKED to repudiate his mad shamans for statements that are more insane, more hateful, more outrageous by several orders of magnitude than Rev. Wright's will ever imagine being. The story is covered for less than a day. It's a blip.

McCain's whack-job houngans are NEVER EVEN ASKED to clarify their rhetoric. People roll their eyes and move on. And the MSM gets bigger ratings, which equals more money.

There is a double standard.

It's a racist double-standard.

Either the MSM holds McCain to account, or the Wright issue is a whole lot less of a story. Don't tell me the media is "fair and balanced" unless one of those things happens.

You speak to precisely my point.

There is a systemic unfairness that I believe we are now seeing with older and wiser eyes. And all of the things you mentioned can be fixed. It will take time, but it can be done.

It will take all of us and it will take far better leadership than we've had the last decade and perhaps before that. Apparently, even in the Clinton era, incomes for the rich went up at a much faster rate than they did for everyone else even though more people did better. So the basic trickle-down hoax was never really addressed. President Clinton might have gotten to that if he'd not been distracted by his own obsession with chasing skirts, and by the various manufactured scandals of the GOP. President Gore might have gotten to address it had he been allowed to actually serve as President. That we are seriously behind the curve with Dubya is obvious and needs no further comment.

What would be interesting is if someone here could talk about how he/she managed to succeed DESPITE the lie that's been foisted on us. That would be uplifting.