"Instead, Obama caved in to the media pressure. As a result, I think a lot more of Wright than I do of Obama. No one should ever let somebody else tell him who he is supposed to like and dislike, and whose views he is supposed to denounce."

Yes, but in fairness to Obama, he did try to address this in a grown-up, non-pandering and potentially even productive way, but as usual, the media/American people spat the bit.

Anyway, we all got our pound of flesh out of Obama on this.

The only question now is whether Ayers will become the next Wright.

Or maybe they'll make him reject and denounce Farakkhan another half-dozen times.

Who knows what's next?--That's the joyride that is mob rule, there's just no telling!

Here's Joan again praising Hillary. Joan never really left the radical feminist camp. Just watch her on tv. The pained feminist grimmace, the toothy half smile, the concealed anti-male nastiness.

No wonder Bill chases other women.

..not-so-admirable stand on the gas tax? It's not not-so-admirable, Joan. It's worse than that. It's profoundly contemptible. It's the most rank pandering. She knows it, you know it.

She not only shows contempt for the facts, she shows utter contempt for the low-information voters she's trying to manipulate in Indiana. This was nothing more and nothing less than grotesque pandering for votes, from people too ignorant to actually understand what she's talking about.

And we want her for President?

I have to tell you, this particular episode did it for me. If I have to vote for her in November, I will do it with my nose held firmly shut. She stinks of mendacity.

Hillary's behavior this week displayed everything that's wrong with our current leadership. When a leader will lie for votes...for power (common enough, granted), are they really fit to lead?

Obama is no saint, I'm sure, but at least he resists the most obvious pandering. Hillary revels in it, apparently.

On page one of this thread, I asked for an argument on why I should keep returning to this blog, since her Clinton slant has become so obvious and thinly examined that it's boring.

I said I'd follow the thread.

Nobody's answered the question. Weeping called the post fair in his first comment, and thanked Joan, but that wasn't really an argument. It didn't seem fair to me at all.

Your point about how she shoehorns courage into the post (I like "essay based") helped put a finger on why I found the it unfair and silly. Your comment, by the way, addressed my question, but in reverse, very well. You convince me.

The only argument I can think of to keep visiting this spot, is that Joan throws out the grain of irritating sand that produces the pearl of these threads, with their mix of idiocy and gold.

For which I compliment you, Joan.

But I'd still love it if someone could give me an argument as to why a column with this degree of journalistic importance (the managing editor at SALON!) shouldn't be expected to be more interesting.

It's nice that the editor of Salon thinks Hillary has fortitude. Which portion of her fortitude do you relish the most?

Perhaps the time Hillary said that Obama wasn't muslim "as far as (she) knew?"

Possibly for using Sydney Blumenthal to data mine right wing smears to shot gun out to any news or political source who will heed them, thus doing the work for McCain better than the GOP could?

I know. How about the time she said she and McCain were the only tigers qualified for president?

But wait. There's the endless hammering on Rev. Wright's relationship with Obama and all the other smears linking the hapless ersatz Democrat with grade school rebels, boardroom assoociates and shady Chicago pols--as if it's possible to get anywhere in Chitown without encounters with the city's many "son of a bitches" as Saul Bellou wrote in The Dean's December?

But no, you'd say: just good politics. Well, I've got a bulletin for you, Ms. Walsh, it's always good politics when it's happening to the other candidate--the one you don't favor.

I've voted Democratic for a half century and have seen nothing close to what the Clintons are doing to Obama. Hey, how about a broadside for Obama on his fortitude ( I won't use balls; that is just so so so vulgar) in resisting all out war on Billary. Because they are so so so vulnerable

...does he have ovarian fortitude?

Oh, Joan, why the silliness?

Content free.

...then does Bill have a vagina?

(If you want to play games, Joan-there's always Scrabble or Monopoly.)

Oh, no doubt it should be more interesting, more probing, more original, etc.

Within the context of Joan's latest offerings, which have seemed hell-bent not just on lowering the bar, but burying the bar under six feet of earth, frankly, I found this refreshing and yes, (relatively) fair and honest.

It seemed to me like Joan's piece here, however superficially or half-heartedly, was genuinely informed by the criticisms she's been taking.

Nowhere near the sort of response I believe she owes her readers, but it's something. I can work with that.

And needless to say, I too enjoy (for the most part) the threads she manages to generate.

I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if we're not all Joan's barking seals in some way (Arf! Arf!), though as I've said, she has always been humane towards me personally, so if that sounds too cynical or antagonistic, I take it back. It's not spoken out of antagonism, just a sort of resigned bemusement.

That's life in the big city, I suppose.

However she has no integrity, she lies and is a fraud. If you think they are good qualities for a president then vote for her. I think she is a Richard Nixon in a light blue pants suit but has a bigger A$$ than him.

IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING TO WATCH HER CAMPAIGN IMPLODING !!!!!

Remember that ovaries make a fair amount of testosterone, too, so can't we just say she has "Ovarian Fortitude"? Testosterone is a girl chemical too. We just seem to make better use of the energy it provides.