That quote is plainly true. It's not even controversial. All it says is that the answers provided by the candidates were no different than in other debates, and everything I heard them (even Kucinich!) say was from the same script they've been using all along, carefully calculated to offend no one. How can this quote be an example of the Times' defensiveness when not only is it obvious (and rather gently stated) but it isn't even very flattering to the Times itself? Anyone who thinks last night's debate was something significantly different is delusional, and the Times was right to burst your bubble. They even did so with restraint. I agree that they're generally hypercritical of new media, but there's no reason to think that's what we're seeing here.

And Joan, you say you think last night's questions elicited "much better answers," then you decline to provide anything at all to back up this statement, which would have been about the only possible way to give your argument substance. Then you close by essentially mocking the notion that we'll always need "journalists." So Salon's editor-in-chief doesn't agree that we need "journalists" to get the truth. Good to know.

What an embarrassment. Get an editor. Or, better yet, end this blog.

There are a couple of related complaints being made that 1) We should stop all this boring and repetitive enumeration of the problems caused by Bush, and 2) We need to talk more about what we should do to fix these problems. Both are bad ideas.

We can't just let "history" take care of Bush because he's still here. He's still doing damage, and he's got a year and a half of more damage to do. His mistakes may be obvious to you, and sorry if you're bored by them, but not all that many Americans understand the seriousness of them. We can't just dismiss Bush and talk about what to do next because most people consider "more of the same" to be a valid option for what to do next!. We haven't even convinced most Americans that we need to do something different, despite what the polls say. We all know what's about to happen: Republicans and the media will keep telling us that things are going well in Iraq, Bush will stay the course and probably accelerate it, and collectively the American public will say "Alright, let's give it another chance." And it's quite possible that Bush will be succeeded by a Republican president who essentially changes nothing. So we have no choice now but to keep shouting about what a mistake this all is because I'd argue that choosing the best option is not crucial (or even possible) until we get this one off the goddamn table.

Also, insisting that we must figure out how to fix the mess we created just repeats the mistake of assuming we can control everything. We can't make the Middle East the way we want it to be, and we don't even have the power anymore to guide the outcome of events. What we need to do now is minimize the damage and make the best of what happpens. That's a hard lesson to learn, but it's incontrovertible.

Clearly this law is a sham and simply an attempt to make abortion impossible, but it relates to a serious problem with the pro-choice position vis-a-vis feminism: If you insist that the abortion decision is the woman's alone, you can't be surprised when some men want no part of the child-rearing responsibilities, including the financial. It's fundamentally inconsistent to argue that the responsibilities are shared at every stage of life (including contraception) except one. There are plenty of ways to rationalize excluding the father from the abortion decision, and some of them are persuasive, but that doesn't change the fact that it damages the argument for holding men responsible as fathers. It may not be honorable for a father to say that you can't pick and choose when he's to be an equal partner, but it's at least a valid argument.

Excuse me, but how blind is it to single out Ohio for all its embarrassing trends? Like we couldn't pick another state and ridicule it just as easily? Ohio is just big and diverse enough to be representative of the country as a whole, like it or not. That's the thing about Ohio--it's unexceptional. It's the norm, and that's why it gets so much political attention.

Sorry, folks, but as Ohio goes, so goes the nation, so you'd better broaden your target.