From the Saturday NYT piece in which Our Boy’s intelligent and strategic center-right, hawkish appointments are rationalized:

“there’s going to be no time for experimentation,” a member of the Obama foreign policy team said.

What was it Naomi Wolf’s been saying about perceived crisis and power?

Barack Obama is still the smartest person who stepped up for the job. His policies will never be as enlightened as Kucinich, but he will definitely move us in the right direction. Let's wait until he sets some bad policies before we jump all over him. Meanwhile, give him some room and air-space to grow into the job of trying to salvage both our nation and the ecosphere from thirty years of Republican-led ravaging.

Obama did not run as a liberal, nor as a progressive, nor as a socialist that only lives in the wet dreams of the left behind right.

What Barak Obama promised me was to be smarter and less compromised than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, who thought they were required to run as not-quite-racist Republican substitutes in order to get elected.

Except for possibly that other Senator from Illinois, and maybe that 5-star general from Kansas, we have never had a President who came from nothing but smarts.

Have faith, people.

While I would prefer a strongly progressive administration, the fact is the country is in such a state, that I'd happily, gratefully even, welcome a merely competent administration. If Obama is picking people for their expertise in their field over their loyalty to Obama it'd be a long overdue and damned nice change.

As far as not being anti-war enough, being against the Iraq war, doesn't mean being anti-war. I mean the Iraq war was really really poorly implemented, lets not forget based on lies and mistakes. You don't need to be a hippy to be against the Iraq war. Even warmongers are against the Iraq war. And of course I'd prefer an pro-war but anti-Iraq war admin over any of the alternatives that were available to us in the election.

I posted a similar letter on Greenwald's site, but have to say Take a Deep Breath and look at what's going on.

I CONSIDER myself a way left of center liberal, and make no apologizes. I want to see national healthcare, end of war and all the rest, along with protected forests and parks, ecological progress and a massive reduction in military spending to pay for everything. I want to see the very rich taxed until they squeak, and the criminals who wrecked the economy dragged from their $25 million dollar houses and lashed publicly on television before they’re sent to jail. And, so on…

HOWEVER, I worked for President-elect Obama, gave money to the campaign, gave money to Move On. And, so on…

I MAY be a raving wild-eyed socialist at heart, but I’m also pragmatic enough to sit back and give Mr. Obama all the support I can muster so that he has a chance to keep us all from falling into the black pit that the Republicans have dug while they were looting the nation and murdering people.

NOW if rational people, and by that I exclude snake-handling pro-whatevers, can’t buckle down and help turn the Ship of State around before they start making demands that can only be addressed later, then I fear we’ll just hand everything back to the cretins at the American Enterprise Institute and let them elect Sarah Palin.

"Progressives", whatever the hell that means, are the Democrats' version of the Republicans' right-wing evangelicals. Obama was elected because millions of centrist voters thought he was the best man for the job. He is brilliant, and I hope he is also a master politician. He's more likely to get something done than an extreme leftist who would have every policy subject to a Republican fillibuster, possibly supported by Blue-dog Democrats. Give the guy, and the country, a chance.

I was apoplectic over the Lieberman bailout but you have GOT to be kidding me?

or could the picture accompanying this piece be entitled, “Boy Caught Fibbing”?

He's good at petting.

Blasting emails telling us about all the Clinton admin alums in the new Democratic lineup

Those BAD boys at the RNC have given poor Madden a nuclear wedgie.

Jeezusaleezus....why even Pat Buchanan's needling the poor child

OK, we, let me emphasize that, we elected the candidate we wanted, based on faith and trust in his vision reflecting what we wanted, on the direction we wanted this nation to take. We also, many of us, wanted to do this with Hillary Clinton at the helm. It was a tough battle, and our guy won, and every damn body was thrilled to have him there, and now we think he should be listening to each and every one of us as to how to accomplish this vision of a changed Republic? Why aren't one of us President then? Because we wanted someone smarter than us! And that's what we got.

Barack Obama has begun to assemble his cabinet and suddenly we are all wailing and moaning and gnashing our teeth because he's doing it as he would do it, given what he's got to work with? That many of these people were part of the Clinton administration -- well Jesus! -- wasn't that a terrible eight years of peace and relative prosperity?

Let's pretend, just for a while, that Obama actually knows what he's doing. That's why the hell I not only voted for him but worked for his campaign and shoveled an unprecendented amount of my fixed income into said campaign (Clinton never got that much money from me, although he did have my words and my energy as part of the wind carrying him toward the White House). So yeah, let's just imagine, for a moment, that Obama actually has a clue what he's doing and let's give him the time and the space to get it started.

Don't get me wrong: any government we elect we'd better watch like a damn hawk, but change has already happened. How much change can we handle in the first hundred days? I mean the first hundred days of preparation, since the man hasn't even been sworn in yet. Yeah, I understand, Madden, that you've pinned a little qualifier on the end of the article, but you also know how many people read all the way through these things? Or do you truly believe everyone who passes by hangs on your every word? Why don't you just go yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater? Why the holy hell can't you give the man a chance to take a deep breath before you start stirring the ashes of discontent? Come on! These appointees will have to actually work for Obama, not just run randomly amok based on what we think they their world views may be. They're on his payroll now, and they do have impressive resumes. For god's sake (or at least the country's) why not let this jell first, see how it starts to play out and then start screaming about how we were mugged by the Uppity Negro?

Christ!