Too bad, Glenn, that you were unable to go on Rachel Maddow's show. I keep hoping that MSNBC and other networks would widen their net and have more diverse voices from the blogs, not just the usual suspects. It was great to see Ari Melber on MSNBC the other day -- he did an excellent job.

BTW, the Maddow show last night was excellent, better than the horse-race obsessed shows aired prior to the election. Maddow is clearly pissed at the huge amounts of money being thrown at corporate behomeths, while what's left of our manufacturing base is disappearing, and many in the media blame high labor costs instead of inept management for its failures.

The November 25th Democracy Now was much more to the point. Anyone who isn't convinced that Obama's choices for his economic team are disastrous should watch this segment. His choices do not represent change as much as they represent an assurance to Wall Street that their greed and poor judgment will be rewarded by enormous gifts of cash, because somehow these irresponsible companies are judged to be "too big to fail." As Naomi Klein makes clear, this has been made easier by the fallacy promoted by many progressives themselves during the election campaign -- that the deregulation and privatization policies that paved the way for our current financial crisis were somehow the fault of Republicans alone. She points out that these same actors set these forces in motion during the Clinton years and represent the Clinton economic philosophy. Had progressives been honest about this during the campaign -- instead of holding up the Clinton years as some kind of progressive nirvana -- it wouldn't be such an easy bait and switch for Obama to bring back the same batch of crooks to now make sure that even more money gets funneled into the criminal enterprises, commonly referred to as our banking industry.

"Fun Drama"? This sums up what Maddows is all about; she's the cute liberal entertainer providing a witty, sharp counter to all those boring, macho entertainers on the right. Hey, but what's so earthshatteringly important that we can't have a little fun and a little "drama" watching Maddows over breakfast? Certainly not Obama's decision to retain Gates! and I guess I'm just a big party pooper because I refuse to jump for joy because Glenn and the mighty "liberal" blogs "nailed" Brennan

Yeah, sorry if I find it laughable that anyone would consider it a big victory for the blogosphere that one right wing torture lover decided not to seek a position in Obama the "centerists" administration while he's just hired the Iran oblitorator as Secretary of State.

And Never mind that it didn't bother Mr. Change that one of his advisors had zero problem with rendition!

Reality Check: Obama's about to totally screw the working people of this country for the sake of "saving" Wall Street. He's about to escalate the war in Afghanistan. But go ahead and pat yourselves on the back because you all think you nailed one creep.

he's just hired the Iran oblitorator as Secretary of State.

but when did Hillary Clinton obliterate Iran? did I miss that?

Did she send in her secret shock troops? Because, you know the SoS doesn't control any armed forces, right?

You may be right about the role of Navy leadership within the new administration.

The Navy is the Navy, as my Annapolis-grad brother keeps telling me from his retired captain's chair, as he drones on about leadership and what not.

I yawn mostly, not having a vested interest in the military in a career sense (though I do have a punched ticket in my scrapbook) - nor in the minutiae of leadership, whether military or corporate.

However, I did have the pleasure a few months ago of shaking hands with Alberto Mora, the former Navy counsel, who appeared at a recent discussion about the book, "Torture Team", by Philippe Sands. In the book, Sands, a British barrister, lays out in detail what happened within the White House, Pentagon, and Justice Department legal staffs on the torture and rendition questions and procedures.

Mora is credited with challenging all the other administration lawyers on the effort to push the envelope on these tactics, what another government official called going right up to the line and "getting chalk on your spikes."

I hope we hear from Mora again - soon.

One, John Bolton's appointment as UN ambassador was also blocked to a large extent due to bloggers' efforts, in that case largely due to Steve Clemons. There have also been some other fairly high-profile examples of bad appointments being thwarted to a large extent due to bloggers's efforts, such as Spakovsky, and some judges.

Two, call me cynical, but I can't help but wonder if Obama never really intended to appoint Brennan, and the possibility of his being appointed was floated, and then withdrawn, by design, in order to placate the netroots and make them feel that they have influence over Obama.

In any case, it's good to see that the "He can do no wrong" Obamabots aren't the only Obama supporters out there these days, and that productive and energetic dissent is still alive and well on the left, despite Obama's having won a decisive victory, which is ultimately much more about a movement and its ideas and goals, than about a man and his undeniable and deserved star quality and talents. Let's hope that Obama never loses sight of that.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I get the feeling you may be implying that Brennan could be a sacrificial lamb. Some raw meat to the 'netroots'

No, absolutely not. Almost exactly the opposite... something more like what Digby says, with the "netroots' as some sort of misdirection.

ITo a large extent, we're all speculating, so I'm being free in throwing my WAGs out there. The bloggers/psychologists theory doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I could be engaging in gross tinfoilhattery with this.

And it may be that things will be clearer when the eventual designee is out there.