I wonder if you would be willing to recheck facts and re-evaluate your rather harsh appraisal here of one of President Obama’s selections for Team America.

Because one thing we know with certainty (because President clearly pledged it to us repeatedly) is that President is all about Change, Hope, Integrity, rejection of insider mentality, Transparency, and Trust. President would simply never promote or continue the same venal and criminal thinking and behavior that created and perpetuate business as usual in America. He said he would not.

One thing I have come to appreciate with this New Era is the difference between “smart”, or “intelligent” and Super Smart. The stratagems and maneuverings that New Leader is using to make good on his campaign promises are so subtle, so complex, that it will indeed take time to comprehend them all. With Mr. Daschle, for example, notice how he recruits a new member for Team America while creating the impression that he is just installing another criminal whore beholden to the medical-industrial criminal cartel!. This actually would place President just where he needs to be in order to make good on his promises, by . . . . . . . HA! Some of the trolls here thought for a moment I was going to reveal President’s game plan for Change. Suckaaaaaahs!

My concern, Glenn, is that in not appreciating and respecting the subtlety and shrewdness of the “politically realistic” strategies President is employing, you risk marring the image and sheen of promise and integrity that President has achieved. Where would that leave us?

Reduced to using condoms when the really assertive Dems insist.

How weak is that?

It’s not just that he’s super smart, principled, charismatic, and helps us to love our Country. He’s brave too, like a warrior. He just whacked a bunch of dangerous Pakistanis, including apparently some very young terrorists in training. You didn’t notice? A few days later he celebrated by rooting for some real winners, the Steelers, model citizens, while probably working out some sweeeet deals with other smart and principled leaders! No wonder it’s feeling good to be an American again!

And? He knows how to talk tough, check it out:

"We'll ensure that CEOs are not draining funds that should be advancing our recovery," Obama said in his weekly radio address this morning. "And we will insist on unprecedented transparency, rigorous oversight and clear accountability, so taxpayers know how their money is being spent and whether it is achieving results."

And multitask! At the same time he’s talking tough, he’s reaching out to make sure that American captains of finance aren’t left out of the economic recovery:

In finalizing the plan, officials have made a policy decision that could dismay lawmakers. The administration is likely to refrain from imposing tougher restrictions on executive compensation at most firms receiving government aid but instead retain looser requirements initially included in the Treasury's $700 billion rescue program, a source familiar with the deliberations said.

.

That handsome young man can call the plays for me anytime! See you at homecoming!

The function, image, and constructed meaning for “professional” attire are around status, achievement, clean, rigid lines, order, respectability, impeccability, that is: legitimacy and immunity from reproach. Exactly as needed.

This is, after all, a bank isn’t it? That is to say, a criminal enterprise.

Expectations for degree of conformity to what is constructed as “professional” attire and grooming seem quite tightly associated with degree of antisociality of the enterprise: business, banking, military, legal, executive, political.

Reaction formation. Anna Freud.

Now unplug.

That seems an especially kind way to frame this phenomenon and to forestall an exploration of its deeper meanings that might lead us uncomfortably close to the intersections of, say, reality TV, the soap opera, developmental delays, and what tends to be constructed here at Salon as a “national election”.

saying things about Dad!

Only a hater could say those things, and you know what that means.

He didn’t even know about that thing in Pakistan, he would have told us! And is he responsible now for Israel killing a few thousand potential terrorists? All he did was say, hypothetically, he would do the same thing! Anyway, he’s going to change, he promised. He’s going to get clean this time. When your best friends are criminals, and you owe them, it takes time to set boundaries and break things off! Like, Duh? Maybe a couple of years, but you’ll see. BTW, he was just resting when he was down there on the kitchen floor.

He just needs more time, time to work an honest program. Him and his friends, and his higher power. You didn’t happen to notice, dipshits, that they go to regular prayer meetings? What does that tell you? What kind of hater would question this man of Faith and Hope and Change?

So shut the fuck up!

Gosh!!!

does the meat-processing segment from Wonder Showzen come to mind, as I’m sure it must for most readers, with the cheerful voice over “This is how we learn to kill” as children tour the killing and flesh-packaging factory?

Who knows? I suppose one would be angry and irritable, if that deceptive and defensive lesson was the best one could muster as a parent. But as compensation, his antics must be cool, or comforting, or appealing in some way to audiences, as evidenced by the popularity of the program. And some will yet claim that television does not serve pressing needs.

and lessons that must be faced, gains admiration and respect for Salon’s writers and editors, whose recent efforts seem more bold and vital, at times as if loosed from a spell.

a) that, as Gary insists, New Leader cynically lied and whored for votes in his eloquent and audacious autobiography,

or

b) that he actually believes in his endorsements of the dementia-fueled inanities of the former Republican crime boss?

You decide.