http://alternet.org/election08/82703/

While nearly all politicians shade the truth now and then, some utterly disdain the truth, a category that includes George W. Bush and increasingly Hillary Clinton, as she made clear again in Wednesday night's debate on the strange topic of Vietnam-era Weather Underground leader William Ayers.

Since last year, the Clinton campaign has been pushing the supposed Ayers connection to Barack Obama as an attack "theme" to take down his candidacy. But Clinton went even further in the debate suggesting that Ayers had reveled in the 9/11 attacks -- a false claim clearly meant to inflame Americans against Obama.

Ayers, now a graying college English professor living in Chicago, did support Obama's state senate campaign and served with Obama on a board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a philanthropy that gives out grants aimed at alleviating poverty.

This is what I have been waiting to hear from Democrats like you who support Obama. Clearly, it is McCain and his press lackeys who need to be the focus of attack, not our own prospective candidates.

Conason, Walsh, and the rest of you all: Change your own way of doing business, or get out of the way.

We ain't playing those old games - not.this.time.

Get ready for the "Obama way". You know it's happening.

Don't be scared, Barack will make minced meat out of McCain, just like he reduced your once-inevitable candidate to the current display of acute and ugly desperation.

Wednesday's farcical proceedings in Philadelphia have prompted me to send this entreaty to all the Democratic voters in Pittsburgh, my hometown.

I'm the son of a sheet-metal worker and a remarkable woman who raised seven kids in a tiny two-story, three-bedroom home in Carrick. My dad died last year at 82; we honored my mom with a surprise party on her 80th birthday just last month.

Although work and wanderlust have taken me to California, I love my birthplace, its history, and, most important, its people. Specifically, I love Pittsburghers' reputation for neighborliness and plain speaking (albeit with the filigree of that distinctive accent).

It is our innate desire to dispense with humbug that I appeal to here. With this reputation in mind, I feel certain that you are as appalled as I am about the wasted opportunity that was Wednesday's "debate."

Those of us living outside my home state have some recourse; me, I'm sitting here in my Pirates jersey writing to you. However, unlike those of us in California who have already voted, you have a more direct course of action. You can send a strong message at the ballot box next Tuesday.

By voting for Obama you will accomplish two important goals. One, you will be voting for the next President of the United States. Two, you will be emphatically stating to ABC News, the rest of the media, and cynics in both parties that you reject having your intelligence insulted and more important concerns about gas prices, Social Security, the Iraq war, and education tossed aside in the superficial pursuit of pins and preachers.

Make me proud. Make yourselves proud.

Right now the media hacks are focused on destroying Clinton. If and when they dispose of her they will go after Obama. I predict that the focus of their attack will be Micelle Obama, who is for the moment getting a free ride. It will be nasty.

And then again, put the ball back in their court by asking, "What does this have to do with the job I intend to perform if elected?" Or "I think that if Republicans aren't expected to answer, or even to be asked in the first place, then these types of questions have no place in our public discourse."

It isn't until someone confronts their subtle mendacity head on, that anything will likely happen to make it change.

That's a fine idea with one problem: The media wouldn't report the candidate's actual response, they'd merely report -- loudly -- that s/he "... refused to respond to questions about [x]."

I'm sure you can write the rest of that script.

but that just means that the Democrats have to stand up and have some fucking balls for once- with or without Obama campaign approval.

go Democratic 527s!! start with the smearing of Mccain.

Joe, you can't even write an article about Obama without making it all about Hillary. Certainly Hillary has been attacked unfairly over the years, fair enough, but then you say:

By contrast, Sen. Clinton wrote an accurate account of her landing at Tuzla Airport in "Living History," her bestselling memoir, which suggests that the over-dramatized version she recalled more recently was more a mistake than an intentional lie. But with her, the mainstream media will always tend to assume the worst -- a matrix of suspicion rarely inflicted on GOP politicians like Reagan, Bush or McCain.

Oh thats rich. She knew the truth, and had written about it accurately, then told a barefaced lie, but to you it was "more a mistake than an intentional lie".

Yes, it was a lie, and when Reagan and Bush told lies they should have been called on them also. So are you are saying it is okay to be as bad as Reagan and Dubya?

Those slanted rules have guided coverage of Sen. Clinton during the past several weeks, notably in the controversy over her inaccurate version of her arrival in Bosnia a decade ago.

Bad example. In 2000, Republicans and the lapdog press accused Gore of telling tall tales to puff himself up, by either distorting his words or flat out making shit up. But on NAFTA, SCHIP, FMLA, Northern Ireland, and especially on Bosnia Hillary is actually guilty of what the GOP accused Gore of doing eight years ago: exaggerating her resume and making shit up.

By contrast, Sen. Clinton wrote an accurate account of her landing at Tuzla Airport in "Living History," her bestselling memoir, which suggests that the over-dramatized version she recalled more recently was more a mistake than an intentional lie.

How do you figure?

Why otherwise would the campaign press corps have demanded the Clinton tax returns

Because she demanded it of her primary opponent in her 2000 senate race, that's why.

while nobody insists that McCain release the returns filed by him and his beer heiress wife, Cindy?...when will the press corps take another look at McCain’s "Reform Institute," the nonprofit think tank that has served as a soft-money conduit and cushy sinecure for his political advisors?

Because the rest of the media is to McCain what Salon is to Hillary. For those of you who think that Hillary hasn't received a fair shake in the media, keep in mind that the networks have spent and continue to spend far more time covering Rev. White than Tuzla. Or just ask any Edwards supporter about who has received biased coverage and who has not. The first story I read on the night of New Hampshire's primary didn't even mention Edwards or how he got 17% of the vote, yet rattled off every Republican candidate that got half his percentage and far fewer votes, since more Dems voted than Republicans.

And the media continues to prop up Hillary's candidacy by pretending this is still a close race. Barring a Spitzer-sized collapse on the part of the Obama, there is no way the delegates will not go with the candidate who has an insurmountable lead in states won, pledged delegates, and in the popular vote. Deal with it. And the sooner we do, the sooner we can start working to end McCain's free ride in the press.