Since it has become quite the fashion among Clinton supporters to depart these shores with long, heartfelt, moving descriptions of their decision to stop posting on DailyKos, I think another one would be redundant.  But I have been here five years and hate to leave without saying goodbye.  I'll try to keep it short.

I've been a member here since late 2003, after I left daily journalism.  I came as a Clarkie, stayed through Kerry/Edwards and the glorious battles of 2006, supported Edwards from the day he announced in New Orleans (my pet cause) until the day he dropped out.

I am really shocked.  SHOCKED!  I have never been quite so shocked.  What more will they do to our poor Hillary?  Now they are running photos of her in a DRESS.  Trying to emphasize that she is a woman.  How low can they go?

This was sent to me by a friend of mine who received it, probably as spam, this morning.  Although my friend supports Obama and I support Clinton, we both thought this smacks of an old-fashioned Karl Rove trick, left over from the 90s and the early days of teh Drudge Report...

The arguments and points laid out it in seem so rusty that I suspect it's an old one that is currently being recycled.

Just so you know, I don't think there is any connection between this email and the Obama campaign.  Just as I don't think there is any connection between certain photos that certain Democrat-hating Drudgistic idjits are circulating around the Internets claiming they come from the Clinton campaign.

UPDATED to make clearer my point that I am not posting this because I am anti-Hillary, or because I actually think anyone connected with Obama is really circulating this.  My Obama-supporting friend found it as ridiculous as I did.  I think it's right wing junk - like a lot of hate stuff posted on Dkos.

UPDATED again because Obama supporters keep wanting to read this as an attack on Obama or his supporters, which IT IS NOT.

The New York Times has just posted this story.

New York Times report

Will Cindy McCain flash her with those wolfy blue eyes?

Item currently running on Drudge Report:

FIRED UP AND FALLING DOWN: String of Crowd Fainting Incidents Hits Obama Rallies...

Just back from tonight’s Obama rally in Gobstop, Wisconsin, where 500,000 of the faithful gathered to chant "Yes We Can" in an extremely non-cultish manner.  

I fainted three times, and was paid $125 for each faint.  The third faint will earn a $50 bonus because I was close enough to the stage that Barack stopped his speech and narrated my faint until the EMTs got me to "wake up" again.

A friend of mine is a well-known author with a decidedly liberal bent who, like me, was for John Edwards all year.  She's been floundering around in the days since he split the race, looking for someone to support.  Her sympathies veer between Hillary because she is a feminist and Obama because she respects and enjoys watching the great Youth Awakening to the possibilities of politics.

Just now she called me and said she is firmly back in the Hillary camp.  (She knew this would make me happy, 'cause so am I.)  A friend emailed her an essay by the pioneering feminist Robin Morgan entitled "Goodbye To All That #2," which was published on February 2.

In a sequel to her famous essay "Goodbye to All That," Morgan makes a strong, striking, and controversial case for Hillary Clinton -- and against Barack Obama.  You can read the whole essay here.....

Today in Los Angeles a whole bunch of cute li’l puppies and tiny hopeful children gathered on a flowery hillside to link their hands and sing "We Love You, Obama," a new song created spontaneously on the spot by the tiny children, with a big assist from some major LA record companies and all the big-name talent in town who just happened to stop by the flower-filled meadow where the spontaneous event took place and then rushed it into the editing booth for an incredibly professional, and yet spontaneous-seeming, edit job.  At which point it was spread virally from everywhere, beginning with campaign HQ, which had nothing to do with it at all, as it was a completely spontaneous event thought up by the puppies and the kids.

With many excited thousands pouring into his last-minute California rallies, ecstatic press coverage, glittery star events with surprise guest appearances by Shrivers and Kennedys and Winfreys and other representatives of the wealthy Democratic elite, Obama seemed poised for a huge victory.

Some polls had him up by 13 or 14 points.  Most polls had him up by three or four, minimum.  Why did he fall so flat in the biggest, most populous state in the Union, a Democratic stronghold that any Dem must carry in November to win?

The deafening buzz that heralded Barack Obama's supposed surge of support heading into Super Tuesday was drowned out by the quiet casting of ballots.

Marie Cocco's column at RealClearPolitics

Come on in, we're still having fun.

PLEASE RECOMMEND THE DIARY TO KEEP THE PARTAY GOIN!

Boilerplate to fill out three paragraphs.

Blahblahblah.

They can spin all they want on the front page, but here it looks to us like Hillary Clinton managed to stop that tsunami in its tracks.

Keith Olbermann spinning for Obama....but CNN seems to think Hillary did rather better.

"....or How I Became The Loneliest Guy On Campus."

This is a really charming piece by a young guy who found himself just about the only kid around Georgetown U. working for Hillary....

And he says a few things that may feel familiar to people around DKos who have taken up the lonely and fairly unrewarding task of "defending Hillary."

PLEASE RECOMMEND THIS DIARY SO WE CAN GET A BIG SAMPLE! Thanks!

Five times in 2007 I took this poll, with the exact same diary title and the same questions phrased exactly the same way.  

When I ran the poll before, some folks criticized either the title as provocative or the questions as perhaps biased against Hillary Clinton.  The poll was actually designed to attract the attention of people who don't particularly like Hillary Clinton but may soon be presented a choice of voting for a Republican or a third-party candidate, if she wins on Super Tuesday and goes on to become the nominee.

Wolf: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.  We at CNN are doing everything we can to bring you four more years of Republican rule, because we hope they will start another war that will bring our ratings back up to 2003 levels.  Here are our candidates, Bottle Blondie and Big Tall Drink O’Water.
Hillary: Thank you, Wolf.  My name is not Bottle Blondie.  I am the embodiment of 35 years of experience, and admit it, I have gotten a lot better looking since the 1970s.  Please forget about Monica.  Please vote for me.  Ready on Day One.  
Obama: Thank you, Wolf.  My name is not Big Tall Drink O’Water.  I am the embodiment of a whole bunch of audacity, a great deal of hope, and an occasional contribution from some guy I swear I did not know was a slumlord.  Please vote for me.  I will be Right on Day One.

Let me first say that I was a big-time Mike Gravel supporter but then I decided that the name "gravel" sounded kind of itchy and scratchy.  I don't really like gravel when it gets wedged between my toes, ESPECIALLY when I am wearing my flipflops.  What problem do you have with flipflops if this doesn't bother you?

I'm just sayin.

So after Gravel I switched to Kucinich but I decided after awhile I didn't really like him because he looks like the Keebler Elf and also his name is so hard to speall it Hurts my Hand!

I can't take credit for this delicious piece of hearsay.

...it turns out the guy sitting behind me was Rick Santorum, which makes it all the more fun and all the more interesting. So pretty much the whole trip this guy is working his cell phone, talking to people about how anyone is better than McCain and Giuliani would be better than McCain because then at least he wouldn't betray the conservative movement... yeah, Giuliani is bad on some issues like abortion, but at least he would stand with the conservative movement. He was saying that there are people like Susan Collins who vote moderate sometimes, but at least she is a team player who always plays with the team and never plays against the conservative side even if she has to give the liberals a vote because she's from Maine. But McCain will sometimes go against the team even when he doesn't have to.

I've been an Edwards supporter all year long, though I'm not a really rabid type.  Meaning I could be persuaded by pretty much any of his rivals for the nomination should he fail and they take up the mantle.

Mostly I've been obsessed with Kumbaya.  Wanting folks on our side not to circle the wagons and fire. Hoping the party stayed close enough together to defeat the Evil Regime in the fall.

That all came to an end when Sen. Barack Obama compared himself to Ronald Reagan, and said Bill Clinton wasn't a change agent, like Reagan and Obama.

There are SO MANY burning questions on our minds as we prepare to settle down with a bowl of hardened, crispy fat-bearing chips and a whole bunch of cranky old white men who want to be our dictator.

Will the remote operators of the MittWig (TM) be able to provoke a silky and lifelike semblance of motion from that lovely but immovable mane?

Will Huckabee's wife reveal herself as the weird-looking Woman Exploding Disguise Mask that Arnold Schwarzenegger's character wore to try to get past the checkpoint in "Total Recall?"  ("Two weeks.  Twwwoooo weeeeeeks.")

Will Judi Nathan call up in the middle of everything to report that she is in the love nest overlooking Ground Zero and is pinin' for some hot talk from Daddy?

Will John McCain whip out that awful New Hampshire speech and hold everyone hostage with a desperate threat to READ IT AGAIN UNLESS THEY ALL SHUT UP???

I was fascinated by onemadson's provocative thread yesterday noting the steady decline of site visits at DailyKos since August, at a time when the Democratic primary races have reached a fever pitch.

Onemadson's premise seemed counterintuitive to me.  Since Billo decided that Daily Kos was the liberal devil come to life, I have assumed our site numbers were growing exponentially -- at least as fast as America's disgust with George W. Bush was growing.

The discussion that followed was lively - 845 comments when I last checked. Sprinkled through all those comments were some good ideas on why this might be happening.

When I was just a little girl,
I asked my mother, "what will I be?
Will I be pretty, will I be rich?"
Here's what she said to me,
Que sera, sera