The comments you quote from the Obama conference call added little to the issue. However, there is a larger point here.

The ABC debate was a proxy for media coverage as a whole. The reason ‘bittergate’ had little effect on the polls is that voters (even the elevated ‘white working class’) truly reject the type of parsing and guilt-by-association politics that the media emphasizes and promotes.

Obama represents that disgust with the media and rallies those who are tired of the media trying to interpret and filter the news. The media has yet to understand this.

I disagree with other Fray comments that you are biased against Obama. However, your ‘equal-equal’ ‘tit-for-tat’ equivalency formula for the Clinton/Obama campaign shows that even the more far-sighted media does not yet get the scope of voter rebellion against it.

First, the Clinton campaign started the negative campaigning. This is not school yard blaming. It is fact. Obama held back from ‘going negative’ as long as he could but had no choice but to push back in some way.. And mostly he has taken the high road in doing that. I doubt you would disagree on this.

Second, the voters are saying that the media can’t differentiate what is important to voters and what is trivial.. I started questioning Hillary’s foreign policy ‘experience’ in Fray comments last November. So did a lot of other people. I asked whether she was in the ‘situation room’ when Bill Clinton decided to bomb Iraq in 1998. Or whether she was at the table in Camp Davi 2000?

For 19 debates no one in the MSM asked Hillary to back up her claims. If this wasn’t one of the most important questions to be investigated in campaign 2008, I don’t know what was. Yet even the more progressive press gave little effort to investigating Clinton’s role in Bosnia, Ireland, etc.

And there is a huge difference between ‘saying what I know was not the case ‘ (Clinton on Bosnia) and responding to a loose connection between Obama and Ayers, who even Mayor Richard Daley hired to advise him on education policy. The former is a lie, the latter a smear.

All I can say to the media: “Somethin’s going on here and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.”

Did you read today's New York Times?

The front-page story about the retired-military "defense experts" who all turned out to be wired in to the Bush DOD (and this was during the run-up to the war and then during Bremer's tour as head of the Provisional Authority) will give all the networks, Fox particularly, much to worry and apologize about in the coming week.

I expect by tomorrow we'll also know how many of those ex-generals have worked for the various campaigns as defense issues consultants. This could be a tough one to duck, as the Pennsylvania primary is in two days.

But it's not just a tough time for the candidates -- the news divisions of all the networks employed expert help that contradicted the work their own reporters were doing in the field (to be brief, the reporters saw we were losing and the military jocks bought the line that we were winning), had unrevealed (but pretty clear if you looked for them) ties to the players in the story they were supposedly covering as quasi-journalists, and best of all, lots of them were a,so doing BUSINESS in Iraq as defense contractors and consultants for some really big dough.

This means the networks were all used as conduits by the Bushies (Rumsfeld in particular) and now have to explain how they were either suckered into being patsies in a huge swindle OR admit that they were knowing participants. In either case, there isn't a network news department that has half the credibility of your average politician this year. They owe us a massive apology and a promise that they'll do better next time. Berlusconi doesn't have that kind of press control, and he OWNS the Italian media.

This scandal is mind boggling and outrageous beyond words. The Department of Defense (sic) has been engaged in what the DoD calls psyops (psychological warfare) against the citizens of the United States. The corporate owned media giants are deeply complicit in this lastest lurch towards fascism in America.

The very survival of our democratic Republic depends on a reasonably well-informed citizenry. When the civilian head of the DoD, Donald Rumsfeld, conspired with the military to mislead and deceive the American people, that was treason of the very highest order. This is a direct threat to the Republic because Rumsfeld is sending the military the message that "We the People" cannot be trusted with the truth.

In the 1930s the German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, made simple radios available to all German households. The "people's radio" was a key part of the Nazi propaganda machine. The Nazi-controlled broadcasts mixed German cultural fare with Nazi propaganda. This propaganda prepared the German people for war and genocide.

In the guise of military "analysis" from "objective" news sources we have been fed lies and disinformation by what is properly called the War Department. How much further do we have to go down this road before it can be said that "We the People" are under the effective control of the military?

Obama 08!