Next time one of these douchebags accuses Obama of hating white people, can someone please please please point out that his mother's white?

Just when I thought this letter thread couldn't have gotten more inane, we get the AKA Smith/rockybalboa "dialogue". It was bad enough that we have people equating the selection of Rick Warren with Hitler, the KKK, Voldemort, etc. Two things here. One, when Barack said at his acceptance speech that "Those of you whose vote I've not yet earned, I will be your President, too", um, he actually meant that. I appreciate that many of you think Rick Warren is a massive douchebag, but he does speak for a LOT of Americans. Having him give the invocation is a token gesture meant to indicate that Barack is serious about unifying the country. And, sorry but at the moment, that is a hell of a lot more important than repealing DOMA. So many people in this thread are falling into the typical Progressive trap of being unyielding in their ideals but sacrificing actually accomplishing anything. Do you actually think having someone other than Rick Warren invocate (?) is going to result in a repeal of Prop 8 or DOMA or anything else? No, but if you start the process of getting the other half of the country that didn't vote for you to realize that you are truly LISTENING to them, you can begin the dialogue that says "I appreciate your concerns, let's talk about this, but we really need to recognize the GLBT community's full right to marriage". Just giving two crooked fingers to that other half of the nation and expecting that you're going to railroad through gay marriage legislation is a fantasy. It's called politics in a democracy. So, you can have your choice: Be all proud of your ideological purity because you had some no-name minister give a meaningless prayer at Barack's inauguration or work at building a consensus with the hopes of creating lasting change. You choose.

You summed up my sentiment perfectly. Here's a perfectly suited, competent, pro-labor choice for a high ranking position and this is the response from Salon contributors and letter writers?! 3 letters and a tiny War Room blurb? Cripes, guys, we can't have this attitude for the next 4 years.

Everybody, calm down. Bush Dark? Are you joking? The man just installed a Nobel-prize winning alternative-energy-pushing physicist as the Energy Secretary! Obsessing over every silly symbolic gesture is a sure-fire way to marginalize yourself. You can ride your "ideals" right over the proverbial cliff, but if you actually want to govern and actually want to get things done then you need to compromise and make concessions to the opposition every now and again. If that means having some nutter pastor give a prayer, by all means go ahead. Would you have been happier if it had been Jeremiah Wright?

This is exactly the same sort of appointment as Steve Chu, a pragmatic science-based appointment with an eye towards solving our very real future needs. The only difference is that some of my fellow progressives seem to like alternative energy but not biotechnology (though they're fine with using fertilizer, pesticides, and other agricultural innovations of the last 50 odd years). The reality of it is that our food production needs for an ever-expanding populace combined with our biofuel needs mandates the use of novel agricultural technologies. Organic farming, um, isn't going to do it. It's well enough to push organic farming as an option and to allow people to select it in the marketplace. But from a pragmatic view, biotech has the greatest promise of fulfilling our crop needs for both food and fuel. Tom Vilsack's appointment follows the exact same rationale as Steve Chu, namely placing the US at the forefront of solving our future (and near term) problems using technology.

Em, KateTex, Obama was vetted pretty thoroughly. It was called the PRIMARY. Perhaps you missed the last 9 months?

I suppose that I just don't understand the a priori assertion that one nation's dominance in a sport necessarily correlates to that sport being dropped by the Olympics. After all, outside of some suspect refereeing, the US dominated basketball up until recently but no one talked about getting rid of it. And now, the Koreans pretty much rule tae kwon do because they, like, invented it. No one talks about eliminating that. So where does this meme come from that one nation's dominance equals elimination of the sport? Shouldn't that spur other countries to get better?