MarkL, I agree with you completely. As a teenager one of my older brothers was heavily addicted to cocaine. He had been the cool one. The one I made sure everyone knew was my brother because that would somehow make me cool.

The drug use was so transformative that he became unrecognizable. As he descended further into addiction, I personally entered into a fear spiral, fear that he would OD, fear of what he would do next to get drugs, fear of being alone with him and he attacked me for money. It was terrible and all the time remembering who he used to be became harder.

Thankfully he's turned his life around, and I will be forever grateful to the woman that helped him do it.

But if he were running for President I could not support him. I would feel like I'm legitimizing what he did because it is inspirational that he turned his life around.

I keep having visions in my head of speaking to my son about drug use and his rejoinder being "well the President did it, so it can't be as bad as you make it out to be," if Obama becomes President. I can't go through that again. I would not wish it on anyone.

Besides the fact that I think Hillary Clinton would be the best prepared President to take office, I cannot support Barrack Obama.

...this hasn't just been the case for centuries, it's been the case for untold millenia.  It will continue, regardless of my views or your views or anyone else's views, most likely for untold millenia to come: any shift in underlying biology that will change that will take a very long time to occur.

Sure, the chemicals will change, from laudanum to Everclear and peyote to Chardonnay, but self-medication will continue -- in the face of prohibitions and criminalization and everything else that's futilely deployed to stop it.  Mere societal barriers are not going to be effective against something that's wired into our DNA.  (And what's a "hardcore" drug?  Bud Lite? Ambien? tobacco? Advil? or the endorphins that kick in around mile 5?  Personally, I see a continuum, not a sharp dividing line, so I'm very reluctant to draw one and classify those on one side as somehow different from those on the other.)

As to "twelve-step programs", they're an artificial contrivance -- so any claims they make should be considered specious until/unless backed up with thoroughly peer-reviewed research (which some have, and some haven't).  I remain at this unconvinced of the merits of the assertion that addiction is permanent -- I see evidence on both sides of the argument and consider it an open question.

I intended it to be so.  Those who concern themselves with the minutiae of a candidate's persona are best served by watching "Entertainment Tonight" or checking out TMZ.  These are not appropriate topics for serious political debate, most certainly not at a time when we have real problems to deal with.

That means that I choose to ignore those who rail at Senator Clinton's sharper side or question Chelsea's campaigning just as much as I ignore those who carp about Senator Obama's rhetoric and  dissect Michelle's senior thesis and just as much as I ignore everyone who's caught up in the sublimely ridiculous "plagiarism" non-issue.  I'm far more concerned, for example, about the nuances of their respective health care plans -- something that both of them have clearly put considerable effort into, and something that actually matters.  I'm interested in hearing their proposed approaches to Cuba (now timely), their plans for Iraq withdrawl, their views on taxation, and so on.  These are actual, substantive issues that matter.  And given that we have in front of us something relatively scarce -- two candidates of formidable intelligence -- I don't believe we should squander the opportunity fretting over trivia.

Your observations about PA appear to be correct, from where I'm sitting.  Let me try to put them in a broader context based on data noted here (Maryland) during the "Potomac primaries".

In MD and VA, Senator Obama's numbers were markedly lower in areas to the west -- in Maryland, that means west of Hagerstown (where Maryland gets "skinny" for those of you that don't have a map handy); in Virginia, that means "west of I-81", which runs diagonally NE-SW and separates the flatter part of the state from the mountainous part. (In one county in extreme SW VA, he polled 9%.) I would expect to see roughly the same pattern in PA -- while he will no doubt do well in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, his numbers from the central countries (modulo the one containing Penn State, and possibly York and Harrisburg) are likely to be much lower.

However...while this will probably make the PA primary interesting, the bigger question is what it portends for the fall.  I've seen many different polls exploring many different possible scenarios; my overall impression is that MD and VA are within the reach of the Democratic nominee, but PA is going to be tough.  The single biggest ally the candidate will have is turnout -- it will be necessary to sustain the momentum seen in the primaries and to get those opposed to a de facto third Bush term to the polls in massive numbers.

FL looks like it's already lost.

NJ, NH, VT, and CT are potential trouble spots.

" she was just drinking tea"

Or "you're likable enough Hillary", dismissively and arrogantly.

These aren't media types, these are words right out of the candidate's mouth.

"We'll see if Obama can keep the front-runner status he has for now"

???

You admit Obama is the frontrunner, but you deny that Hillary has failed to get enough votes to remain the front runner? What are you saying?

Nobody is trying to force anything. Lots of people may think that it is just about over, but the primaries are going to be held, the voters will decide.

Lots of people were saying very loudly, all last year, that Hillary was inevitable. We didn't see this whining from Obama people just because people were expressing their opinions.

The elections will be held. Don't worry about what people are saying. If this season has taught us anything, it is that everyone has been wrong about something at least once, if not more.

I got the impression of a conspiracy because of all this talk of Obama Rules, and Clinton Rules - you act like you take that stuff seriously. If there were a set of rules that people followed for each candidate, and they were consistent enough to dominate the narrative, then that would be some sort of a conspiracy, no? Just like the Republicans talk of the great liberal media conspiracy which has it rules.

Sorry, but this is just whining. Obama gets trashed as an empty suited, plagiarizing cult-leader, but somehow people like you ignore that and pretend that all his press is good.

Its classic conformation bias. You support your candidate - and whenever the press says something good about her you barely notice, because to you it is just stating the obvious. When they say something bad, it offends you and you notice. When they say something bad about Obama it barely registers because, once again, they are simply stating what you probably beleive is obvious. And when they say something good, it bothers you, because you think it will indirectly hurt your candidates chances.