The problem, Joan, is that you are sitting there on the Axis of Weasels Network -- except for Keith -- and you can't say the truth, because you won't be on anymore. Rachel Maddow found out: she spoke the truth about Matthews, and then got a job only after she made kissy-face with that psycho. MSNBC started the "let's get the chick" game when they joined the Obama campaign in the October 30 debate.

Matthews found out that wasn't an effective way to destroy Hillary, so on the day after, he starts claiming that it was race that lost New Hampshire. Really? On what evidence? Because women are racists? Because the more working-class Hillary supporters are racists, as Andy Kohut implied? It was right around then when all the shows started "looking again" at the LBJ-JFK comparison, and spinning relentlessly. Now it seems to be an undisputed factoid, like, "Gore is so insecure about his sexuality that he has to hire Naomi Wolf to tell him to be a man" became a given in 2000.

My only problem with Obama is that he has positioned himself, because he doesn't want to be taken as the Jesse Jackson candidate, further right than Hillary.

"How come its okay for Billary to attack the Rezko connection, but if Barack were to bring up similar Billary dealings (Whitewater, Monica, et al) it would be horrible?!"

Well, it would be nice if you didn't call the former president and the senator from New York Billary, you know?

And anytime I want to hear what Obama supporters think about Whitewater (the Clintons lost $40,00, and the investigation came up with bupkus) and Monica (Bill didn't resist the flirtation, and he should have known the Republicans would spy on him), then I'll go over the the Obama-- er, the Huffington Post. All they ever found was the girl, you know? And she was alive, happy, and they dragged her in front of a grand jury for no good reason. I'm not sure who the scandal is about, Bill or the GOP's lust for power and tapping phones. But Obama supporters accept everything nasty any Republican has ever said about Bill. Hey, I hear he killed Foster, right? And ran drugs out of Mena, Arkansas. Track that down, will you?

Did an honest, progressive, wonderful and kind Obama supporter just tell Mr. Brown to STFU? Good guys don't do that, do they? And of course, since he's supporting Obama, he must be saying this at the instigation of the Secret Mr. and Mrs. Obama cartel that controls everything. Hey, does that mean that Obama = Bush?

No. I think it's time we ask for a better press corps. This morning's interview with Hillary was shameful. They focused, as is their wont, only on Hillary's rejoinder, not the initial remark. (See, it's only the Clintons who have gone negative, see?)

And this week, Obama has discovered the answer to Bill on the campaign trail: Michele Obama does a very good job of representing her husband. Will the press keep a keen eye out for the slightest negative remark that she makes about the Clintons and scream "reverse racism"? I don't think so.

By the way, I don't think the press is so much pro-Obama than anti-Clinton.

"Needless to say, it was Clinton's short fuse that dominated the overnight stories, not the substance of his remarks in Charleston."

Did he do that? Was it "natural" that he got that reaction? Paul Tsongas was a nice old man who, by the way, was lying about his cancer, and his campaign was one the press was in love with: cut all the entitlements. Like Bradley, who was destroyed in a one-on-one debate by Gore, Tsongas was loved by elements of the press, but not by the voters. Was it ungentlemanly to point out that Paul Tsongas would cut your Social Security?

Meanwhile, Bill was the first, and to my mind the only president who never got a "honeymoon." (Note: Bush got one, extended by three years by his manly reaction to 9/11.) The New York Times fell all over itself trying to make a story about of the insane Whitewater non-scandal. Sort of a prelude to the Judy Miller scandal.

It's not "all about Clinton." It is, however, true that any progressive, from Gore to Hillary (yes) to Edwards to Kucinich, is going to have to swim against a hostile and corporate press and its lazy habits.

Obama's camp mercilessly distorted Hillary's comments about LBJ versus JFK into a slam of Martin Luther King -- in a quest for victory in South Carolina.

I think fundamentally, I am worried about how far Obama will go in embracing "bipartisanship." The remarks have been seized on and distorted, but Obama did run a radio ad in rural parts of Nevada urging Republicans to caucus for the Democrats so they could vote for him. And I got a similar mailing from the Obama camp telling me how to do the same in California.

Is that a bipartisan reaching out (good), or pandering? You make the call.

Doesn't anybody read policy papers anymore? On almost every front, Obama's bipartisan front takes him further to the right that I want to go.