I agree about Panetta. At first I wondered, but then it became clear. He's a political operative, and he's going to the "CIA" to clean house. He doesn't need to know anything about intelligence for the task at hand. What he needs are organizational skills, which he has, and the authorization from his boss, Obama, to do what needs to be done.

I'm still optimistic about Obama's skill as a visionary, politician, and leader. He has to know that McConnell and Boehner are sleaze buckets, and that ingratiating himself to them is a losing proposition. I think he is setting them up.

I welcome the "middle-class" tax cut personally, because my income is dropping, and I need the money. I also know that the tax cut will not revive the economy, any more than Bush's tax cuts did. I spent both promptly, the first time needlessly, the second time for a root canal.

What is needed to revive the economy is employment. If a person has a job, he or she can pay taxes, to say nothing of rent, food, transportation, and health care. Tax cuts do not generate employment. Capital formation does. The creation of businesses that provide goods and services generates demand for other goods and services by proving income.

In lieu of generating capital formation, Obama can create government jobs - construction, to repair our collapsing infrastructure; environmental cleanup; an expanded regulatory and justice system to deal with the criminality of the last several decades; a teacher corps to reinvigorate our education system; a health care system for the whole country, similar to the V.A. care I get. It works. It all can work. All that is required are the vision, the will, and the leadership. I think we have it.

It seems kind of silly to me to expect Caroline Kennedy to campaign around the state for an appointment by the governor. How does one run for an appointment?

She doesn't appear to have the charisma of her father, but she likely would not be a bad senator. Better by far, I would expect, than Mitch McConnell or Saxbe Chambliss. She might even introduce some groundbreaking legislation.

Beyond that, I don't care much. I live in Wisconsin. Russ Feingold will be running for reelection in a couple of years, and that is a greater concern for me.

What you might want to write about is the governor of New York, David Paterson. Bill Moyers interviewed him, why not Salon? You could get an idea of his decision-making process.

At least David Gregory looks the part. He probably won't be in the job for very long. He looks like the weasel that he is, and the show will probably "lose audience."

Something different going on that this situation brings into focus. The past eight years were a distinctly negative time, with the appropriate prominence of a gang of sociopaths. Because of this, and the great promise offered by the candidacy and election of Barack Obama, hopes and expectations have been raised. We voted for and presume that we will have clean, honest, and decent government. If Obama turns out to be just another toad posing as a statesman, then the rest of his life will be one of sorrow and shame.

There has been a shift in consciousness. It will take some time for the transition, but the old, criminal ways of doing things will have to change. One of the ways the change is likely to manifest is in television, where the emphasis on crap is at such a fever pitch. The choices now tend to be grisly cop shows or trashy comedies. Fittingly, the networks are losing money on these shows, and might actually have to come up with real dramas and comedies, such as was done in the 50s and 60s.

Because Obama talks a good game, and actually seems to mean it, people believe he will bring a higher level of effort to his tenure as president. One of the ways he can start is to cancel all foreign aid to "Israel." Let them pay for their crimes with their own money.

The coverage of Obama's vacation in Hawaii is beautifully symbolic of our corporate media. The stories are sheer fun in the way they show how the MSM just make things up out of thin air. They refer to the Kaneohe Marine base as part of the town of Kailua. Kaneohe is a town in itself, a few miles west of Kailua. The fashionable smug thing at NBC (starting with Tom Brokaw) is to pronounce Hawaii as "Hawai." #%%holes. Various reports refer to "Sea Life Park," where Obama took his daughters, as an "amusement park." It actually is a marine research facility, and has some lectures and animal shows for the public, but is hardly an "amusement park," ala Disney World or Six Flags.

I read another report today (AP) that said "Obama, wife Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha are staying in a $9 million, five-bedroom oceanfront house near downtown Honolulu." Kailua, where Obama is staying, is on the other side of the island from Honolulu, separated by a small mountain (pali) range. Liars.

It takes a minimum of care for the truth to get these facts straight, but our corporate media couldn't care less. It didn't matter to them a bit that someone as low as Bush lied us into war, looked the other way when warned about imminent attack, looked the other way when warned of the imminent destruction of one of the world's great cities, corrupted our system of justice, kidnapped, tortured, killed, and stole two elections. They partied with him, laughing at his stupid slide show about searching for weapons of mass destruction. One of them, now the host of NBC's "Meet the Press," did an attempted humorous skit with the criminal architect of the Bush rise to power. These people have no souls, and will be remembered as symbolic of this age of mediocrity.