in this wholly illogical but incestuous world of politics and press would be blow-by-blowjob details of prominent news anchors', editors' and reporters' sex lives - assuming the press is truly interested in being "fair and balanced" and given their sleazy pursuit of and ascension to the upper reaches of power and wealth.

We've already heard a bit about Bill O'Reilly's particular scumminess; how about Adam Nagourney's, or Matt Drudge's, or Bob Woodward's, or Wolf Blitzer's, or Candy Crowley's - exactly how many nights have they spent with or without their spouses or whatever over the last 10 years and what exactly did they do (or not do) and with whom (or what) on those nights? Does Nancy Grace have a boy/girl toy stashed away somewhere? Is Ann Coulter's purse full of vibrators of varying sizes and configurations?

The NYT doesn't have a lock on this pathetic waste of journalistic time, money and energy; as if the two papers had the same wire service, the LA Times did almost exactly the same story today, the hook being Cindy McCain's tax returns, and somehow turning that into the raw material for a Lifetime Channel movie, with sad Cindy gazing at the sunset from her Coronado condo while angry John is soothed in a lobbyist's Watergate bedroom. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-tax18-2008oct18,0,2990290.story

The American mainstream news media is as much an embarrassment to their profession as Sarah Palin is to hers. I cringe to see what our nation has become when the likes of Palin and McCain become the lead political stories in our shabby press. Somewhere along the line of gratifying their lust for money and power, they've all forgotten the definition of self-respect and the meaning of shame - or they never learned.

Abstain from voting for president. Is that heretical? Around here it is, I'm sure. Yet Glenn himself has laid out the case against Obama with all the skill of a prosecutor, and he's right.

Sure, on the surface McCain and the Republicans are far scarier - erratic is the term Obama has succeeded in framing them with, and of course Obama is right, too. McCain and the Republicans are erratic - they have no coherent strategy, confusing strategy with tactics, and political philosophy with campaign slogans - Joe the Plumber is not a philosophy, and even if he were, McCain doesn't believe that philosophy anyway. To McCain and the Republicans, even political philosophy is a mere tactic.

But Obama now - he's coherent, as disciplined as the Buddha, and as subtle. If only he were as detached from American exceptionalism as Siddhartha was from the world. But all you have to do to pull the veil of deceit from the image he's created for us is to read Glenn's posts over the last several months. Look beyond that artful image at what he's offering us:

* Subversion of the Fourth Amendment and amnesty for wholesale, flagrant lawbreaking by telecoms via FISA.

* Refusal to consider impeachment of the most criminal and anti-Constitution administration in American history.

* Continued and expanded war in Afghanistan and threats against Pakistan.

* Opposed to universal, single-payer health care, for maintaining private insurance industry's stranglehold.

* Defining Reaganism with such words as optimism, dynamism, entrepreneurship, as a proper reaction to the "excesses" of the '60s and '70s when it really was an attack on the New Deal and the social and political liberation that caught fire in the '60s.

* Agreeing that offshore oil drilling is acceptable.

* Death penalty for child rapists.

* Approved the overturning of DC's gun control law.

* Favors religious groups being paid with public funds to deliver social services.

* Declaring that Israel is "sacrosanct" and that Jerusalem cannot be the capital of Palestine.

* Abandoned public financing of his campaign when he realized how much more he could rake in, and not just from small donors.

* Has among his advisers such people as Robert Rubin, Anthony Lake, Zbigniew Brezinksi, Madeleine Albright, Sam Nunn - and has now embraced Colin Powell, probably the one man who could have brought down George Bush before the 2004 election, but said nothing.

Glenn has written about much more, but the point I infer is that while McCain is scary and erratic, and with a Democratic Congress is less likely to be a successful president (success in terms of achieving any of his haphazardly conceived goals), Obama is scarily steadfast, unstoppable once he takes the reins, and in no way will he ever allow American power over the world to yield to a democracy of nations. He will still use American power to do the will of the American economy - that is, the will of the American corporate state.

Think I'm wrong? Think about what he said when progressives started yelling about what they saw as his betrayals earlier this year: “The people who say this apparently haven’t been listening to me.”

He's right, they weren't listening. But part of the reason is that he is a genius at projecting himself to be what people want him to be - a savior from the horror that was George Bush. But anyone would look better than Bush. The substance behind Obama's image is far different than believed by millions of people who will vote for him - a number substantial enough to make him president.

The thing is, what they get will not be what they think they're voting for. What they will get is someone who will let them relax a bit, his image and his much-modulated "progressivism" on some social, environmental and economic issues letting them feel OK about endless war and the surveillance state and government bought and paid for by corporations. I think I know what kind of president Obama will be - and frankly, it would not much matter which Democrat was the nominee, the result would be the same. He will not reverse the rottenness that is devouring this nation's reason for being.

I cannot vote for anyone for president.