It is indeed puzzling why no one actually commits acts of journalism about this. I think if anybody did, what would happen to them would be what happened to people who blew the whistle on the Whitewater "scandal," like the great Gene Lyons and Salon's own Joe Conason. They're derided as partisans or simply ignored. Sometimes, they get air or ink, and the press sits there mutely, apparently listening, and then they go back to the latest news from "the Whitewater scandal." Or some scheisskopf says, "Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet," after 5,000 total and complete debunkings of the whole narrative. The narrative never dies.

We don't get any journalist investigating a story anymore, because the new, cartelized press saves on research by not having any. They fired all those people back around 1991. Now they just repeat rumors. You knew we were in trouble when suddenly all those new cable channels discovered Tonya Harding, and they could talk about nothing else but for a month. When the O.J. thing happened, we were screwed.

Hillary has released her income tax statements every year since Bill got elected, and every year in the Senate, at tax time. Just because her opponent seems to think it's a clever trick and makes him look "strong," she should hurry it up this time? Why? "If she's not doing anything wrong, why is she hiding?" This is idiotic when they say it about wiretapping, and it's crummy politics.

As for the pardon documents, there are real people who would be raked over the coals... again... More grandstanding. Bush Sr. pardoned himself, by pardoning the conspirators. Bush Jr. pardoned Libby, thus pardoning at least Cheney and Rove, and likely himself. Bill pardoned a bunch of people that MoDo and the corrupt looneys of MSNBC got really hysterical about. The Rich pardon was partial. I don't believe, in the end, he accepted it, and so the fine was not paid. Way to go.

The Obama crusade, I'm beginning to think, is just as stupid as the Al D'Amato one, except it's being conducted by real clever "leftists" this time, who support someone to the right of Hillary and have conducted the most negative campaign in our recent history. Why do you support Obama, by the way, except that he isn't Hillary?

Sure, maybe McCain's staff is laughing at the idea of facing Hillary. Well, I think she'll wipe the grins off their faces pretty quick.

There's a famous expression in the movie business, "Nobody knows anything," that I wish political junkies would learn too. It was in William Goldman's book, "Adventures in the Screen Trade," about his life as a screenwriter. He had seen endless predictions of this being a hit, that being a flop, proved wrong over and over. People, directors, writers, are always saying they KNOW this or that will appeal to a demographic, but that's just to get money out of you; Goldman had the answer: Nobody knows anything. Political pundits in training ought to pay attention to that. Sure, you can make a plausible case for anything, but you just...don't...know. And you might even get people to invest in a story, in a director, and then it will bomb miserably, and they will hate you. And just when you think your career's over, somebody will give you more money for another film, because of your "track record," and that will be a huge hit. You don't know.

So stop it with, "X will do better against McCain, or Y will do better." The truth is, you're lying. You don't know.

I distinctly remember the speech that Bill Clinton gave in front of some steelworkers, during the time when he went from last to first, when I finally connected with him. Evidently, a lot of America did the same. Would anybody have seen that he would "beat Bush"? You'd have to have been a fortune teller to say that, and they're all frauds, you know.

The last theory of "inevitability" was Marx's inevitable triumph of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and it turns out, there was nothing inevitable about that at all.

If he had been on a legislative roll, okay -- but after a trouble-plagued first year, he's toast. He should resign. It's very sad, but that's it.

What the hell do you think he's been doing, since the October 30 debate on MSNBC? Finding racism in the smallest remark, whipping up his troops to fever frenzy, and trusting Drudge's account that the Hillary campaign gave HIM the picture from Kenya? Man, they have real sharp elbows, driving black voters away from a couple they've trusted for a lot of years. When 90% of the blacks vote for him, and 75% of the whites in Mississippi vote for Hillary, he can even blame Hillary and Geraldine Ferraro for being "divisive." There's one campaign that's divisive here, and it's Obama's, run by Axelrod and Plouffe.