The nomination process should not be an easy one. It’s hazing, and all the candidates need to take their lumps at some point. But you know, there are bigger issues pressing this country right now, and cheering on this kind of gutter politics, simply because the guy you hate came out the loser, is incredibly short-sighted.

We have spent the past week parsing out one single sentence. Yet during this same time, it came to light that our president and the upper eschelons of his administration authorized the abuses of Abu Ghraib. Got that? Our president authorized war crimes, and then lied to us about it over and over and over again. That doesn’t bother you at all? Don’t you think that’s worthy discussion for a presidential debate?

So yeah, lapel pins, “bitter”, who hates America more? Those are the issues we need more information on, since, like, we just don’t get enough of that in the media everyday.

Don’t fool yourselves into thinking this is a good thing just because Obama came out the loser last night. The slack-jawed idiocy of our media is an on-going problem this country will continue to face regardless of who is the nominee.

The line between “news” and “entertainment” has been so thoroughly blurred it’s all but impossible to distinguish them anymore. This is bad for everyone — the candidates, the voters, our nation as a whole suffer because of this. Our democracy is going down the shitter and the media is too busy looking for “gotcha” moments to care. That’s nothing to cheer, people.

In my opinion, it’s been this kind of crap, fomented by an unhealthy blogosphere-corporate-presscorps circlejerk centered on the richest market demographic, with its voracious, bottomless appetite for news snippets that require little press research or real thought, that has been the primary obstacle to the president this country so desperately needs: Hillary Clinton. It’s the planet-eating machine from Star Trek that could consume us all.

As for the hypocrisy… that was a reference to a) Obama’s “I’m above it all” rhetoric while he daily authorizes press memos assassinating Clinton’s character and her husband’s accomplishments, b) his supporters echoing this, harming the entire party in the GE, yet crying foul at Clinton’s far milder critiques, and c) the press refusal to report on these contradictions. (Although today on Fresh Air Dave Davies called Obama on this very thing).

There is also a poll there showing that Barack won. So the next time an Obama troll says “quoting Fox?” like their shit don’t stink …., well, we know better!