I emailed another front pager - someone I've already shared correspondence with.  I pointed out the diary and the comments and asked that the situation be looked into.  No reply.  And no one uprated me.  The only person who commented that it was ratings abuse was someone I blog with over at My Left Wing.

It's out of control over there.  Frankly - Markos should take charge of his blog - if he disagrees with the behavior.  I would guess he doesn't.  It's a pity.  All he's going to be left with are troll patrollers.  I won't be back till after the election.

Yes, I've seen those polls. They match exactly what similar polls say here.

There are very few fair people left with the guts to stick up for what is right and risk the troll ratings and hate aimed their way.

I know how that feels.  I almost decided to stop coming here when I noticed that I had gotten a half dozen "trolls" and one "hide" for some comments I posted the other day.  And to make it worse the same people made stupid replies to me and gave each other "mojo" for them.

It was quite a shock because it had never happened to me before in years of blogging and my first reaction was never to come here again, but on second thought I realized that my mistake had been in entering into a non-front-page thread.  So I will stay around but stick to main threads.

I hope we can all help this place have balance because there is none left over there.

Well I hope to do that too by continuing to drop by here as well as that "other" place.

And yet last night when I was engaged in a debate, one poster linked to an author that wrote right wing propaganda to smear Clinton & then when I pointed that out I got troll rated (although admittedly my other debating points were let be to the credit of the other posters). Then the same poster delighted in posting over & over again the word Bitch to describe Clinton. That was not troll rated & truly was a bit disconcerting to see from members of my own party.  I am not voting for Clinton b/c I think it is my feminist duty mind you; her  gender is irrelevant to me as I think it should be to everyone.  However as a working woman & a feminist when I see people start gleefully calling her a bitch on a DEMOCRATIC blog & that is left alone it does bother me and was something I really never expected to see from my party.  I deal with this in the workplace;  I expect that my party which is about progress would not be reflecting that sort of sentiment.  I found it really disconcerting.

A review of hidden comments . . .at DKOS shows little tolerance for some of the more extreme behavior suggested here.

Right I have noticed the same thing.  And it looks like some of the more extreme trolls (who have also beenposting things here) have gotten themselves banned (at least under the same names) on DKos.

How many diaries or comments were made prior as to when she would release her tax returns?

Well but I think it was one of the debate hosts, (Russert?) who first injected this into the primary debate and then the Obama campain actually called for it.

I would think that this is a legitimate reason for both sides to pay some attention to the actual release (on the traditional Friday afternoon) of a whole lot of complicated data.

I am sure the the staff of both campaigns and also lots of reporters are going to go over the stuff.  We should not be suppressed if some bloggers also want to get into the act and post comments about it on an open site.  I don't think you should be supprised that some of them are a little bit clumsy and over eager.  This is a big blogosphere.

Take it for what you will:

I didn't expect to see anything in the Clintons' tax returns more "smoking" than a big pile of income.  And I'm not against income.

What I am against is hypocrisy and dishonesty.  There's plenty of it to go around in politics, and I do not make any claims that Senator Clinton has cornered the market.  Nevertheless, I was frankly hoping for some schadenfreude when the Clintons' taxes were released because of all the spin surrounding her claims of having been thoroughly vetted.  

Here's what I mean:  Senator Clinton, her senior advisors, and her surrogates pushed hard the meme that Democrats couldn't really trust Obama with the nomination because he hadn't been vetted.  Who knows what the Republicans might uncover to use against him, they said, using it implicitly and explicitly as rationale to vote against him during the primaries and even to have superdelegates help Clinton overcome a pledged delegate deficit.  

Meanwhile, they told us, there is nothing left to find about Senator Clinton.  The thugs have been looking for years, and if you have heard about it already, it doesn't exist.  This argument was intended in part to actually stonewall unwelcome questions, as in Senator Clinton has already been vetted, so if you're asking that sort of probing question, you must be up to no good.  We saw this when Wolfson actually likened Obama to Ken Starr because he had the temerity to question why she hadn't released her tax returns.

And yet, Clinton hadn't been vetted.  The best reason to release tax returns is to show that everything is in order there.  There was no valid reason ever offered by the Clinton campaign to delay the release of these previous years' tax returns, and my sense early on is that they didn't want to have to defend the Clintons' wealth.  But they also handled this issue poorly, and they intended to deceive.  For more than a month, we were told that these returns would be released by April 15, as if this year's deadline had anything to do with the old tax returns sitting around.  I believe they wanted to confuse low-info voters into thinking it was the 2007 taxes being discussed.

And in the past few weeks, we've seen how Senator Clinton's own misstatements undercut this argument of having been vetted.  No one would have dug around for old clips of her visit to Tuzla if it weren't for her dramatic exaggerations about what happened on the tarmac.  

So while I, as an Obama supporter, wasn't pleased with the breathless gotcha excitement some at dKos exhibited, I was frankly hoping something would be revealed.  

Take it for what you will:

I didn't expect to see anything in the Clintons' tax returns more "smoking" than a big pile of income.  And I'm not against income.

What I am against is hypocrisy and dishonesty.  There's plenty of it to go around in politics, and I do not make any claims that Senator Clinton has cornered the market.  Nevertheless, I was frankly hoping for some schadenfreude when the Clintons' taxes were released because of all the spin surrounding her claims of having been thoroughly vetted.  

Here's what I mean:  Senator Clinton, her senior advisors, and her surrogates pushed hard the meme that Democrats couldn't really trust Obama with the nomination because he hadn't been vetted.  Who knows what the Republicans might uncover to use against him, they said, using it implicitly and explicitly as rationale to vote against him during the primaries and even to have superdelegates help Clinton overcome a pledged delegate deficit.  

Meanwhile, they told us, there is nothing left to find about Senator Clinton.  The thugs have been looking for years, and if you have heard about it already, it doesn't exist.  This argument was intended in part to actually stonewall unwelcome questions, as in Senator Clinton has already been vetted, so if you're asking that sort of probing question, you must be up to no good.  We saw this when Wolfson actually likened Obama to Ken Starr because he had the temerity to question why she hadn't released her tax returns.

And yet, Clinton hadn't been vetted.  The best reason to release tax returns is to show that everything is in order there.  There was no valid reason ever offered by the Clinton campaign to delay the release of these previous years' tax returns, and my sense early on is that they didn't want to have to defend the Clintons' wealth.  But they also handled this issue poorly, and they intended to deceive.  For more than a month, we were told that these returns would be released by April 15, as if this year's deadline had anything to do with the old tax returns sitting around.  I believe they wanted to confuse low-info voters into thinking it was the 2007 taxes being discussed.

And in the past few weeks, we've seen how Senator Clinton's own misstatements undercut this argument of having been vetted.  No one would have dug around for old clips of her visit to Tuzla if it weren't for her dramatic exaggerations about what happened on the tarmac.  

So while I, as an Obama supporter, wasn't pleased with the breathless gotcha excitement some at dKos exhibited, I was frankly hoping something would be revealed.  

He's "running against the Democratic Party"?

"Republicans are not attacking him?"

Teresa, I don't know which of these statements is the more insupportable.  Maybe you can try to support both of them and we can find out.

oh let's see. the over the top attacks on Wright. The McCain and Hillary passed the Commander in Chief test which reinforces a right wing notion of national security.

Your assumption is correct, it was intended for tarheel74.  I find your comments quite good.

interested in talking about anything that didn't involve how Obama can't possibly beat McCain.  

You keep them on your patio?  Growing flowers or vegetables?

Correct - although I LIKED & still LIKE John Kerry...

And I like Hillary Clinton - I think in time if I saw more of a track record I might grow to like Obama but his experience needs time to grow, a few months won't do it for me (pre 11/08).  And I do think with everything that Clinton has done for the party & this country that she has EARNED the nomination, so it bothers me when I see the mud slinging from our own side occur.  Like her or not (I do) our country will probably do well under her leadership.

Her supporters' only remaining argument against Obama is that he's supposedly unelectable

This is so sad.  After 2004 I could hardly wait for this campaign to begin so I could vote for Obama.  Over the past three years that enthusiasm has completely disappeared and I see the man for what he is...an eloquent speaker of pretty words without a clue what it takes to run a country.

In the end, though, it's not arguments "against" Obama that matter.  It's arguments "for" Hillary Clinton...for the hard work she has done, for the experience that rests with her, for her grit, intelligence and compassion.  That's what took me out of Obama's column.  They had me and they lost me.