Personally, I would like some really capable people to re-examine the structure of the intelligence agencies.

certainly not an expert, but it does seem like a horrid mess, in need of untangling.

There is also the issue of the out-sourcing intelligence and other govt. functions to private corporations. For example, in all the recent talk about Brennan, chief advisor to Obama and once-certain CIA nominee, the issue of his being CEO of "The Analysis Corporation" has not come up much. Brennan's company held and still holds (I think) a contract from state department for a half-Billion bucks to handle passport processing. Remember, it was employees at Brennan's company who got caught snooping in Obama's electronic data as well as McCain's and Clinton's. God only knows what else they do for the Govt.

The revolving door between govt. spy agencies and corporate spy companies is dangerous development, and Brennan a prime participant in how that all works.

Jebbie is right. People hate Mama and the Papa's record. How can it be? It's awful.

A horrible song? Why was it # one for ten weeks in a row? Soap down and splash!

Before I'm deleted, people hate Monday morning if `um wake-up to see Pedinska?

It takes more that three buckets to clean up. Scrub Pogo. Sing rub a dub in de tub.

I tend to respond at farce value.

It means that yesterday, good, loyal Obama supporters had always been at odds with Centrist Politics — and today, they have never been at odds with Centrist Politics, and have always been at odds with Left-wing Progressivism.

Really? Like with FISA, when they fully fell in with Dem "centrists"? I tend to view Obamabots as neither centrist nor progressive, at heart, but rather as vaguely "left"-leaning political naifs in their teens to 30's who thought it was cool that someone like Obama was running for president, and who liked the pretty words, even if they didn't know what they really meant or if they were sincere. I.e. it was a cult of personality rock star thing pretending to be an ideological and political movement. Or, perhaps, Ramen-style progressivism, something that sort of looks, smells and tastes like what it purports to be, but really isn't.

None of which has anything to do with how Obama will actually govern, of course. Obama sees them for what they are, I'm sure, and was only happy to use them to get elected, even if he, like real progressives, realizes that they're just useful idiots who have a lot of growing up to do before they actually know what they're talking about.

In any case, you're putting up straw men here. Longtime and more serious commenters here and elsewhere are not as simplistic as you make them out to be, neither being Obamabots nor establishment-worshipping centrists. Not everyone who's not screaming bloody murder over Obama's appointments is one or the other. The way to tell the difference, is that those who aren't, while not excorciating Obama over his picks, are not blindly trusting or praising him over them, either. The antidote to blind faith is not blind rejection.

As for whether I'm playing straight man or being suckered, does it really matter? I'm simply responding to a position, whether seriously presented or not, that is ever-present on the intertubes these days. No different from doing the same with an obvious RW troll, pushing a standard RW meme. It's the meme that one argues with, not the memer.

Yesterday my wife asked me for a pair of wirecutters, and this morning one of the "strings" of the piano was missing. Last week, we rented an Italian gangster movie in which garrotting was prominently featured. And you think you have problems?

I won't be able to sleep for a month.

Whenever I think about what would happen if the CIA were completely abolished, I think about the dozen or so guys from al Qaeda who tried to attack the US ten years ago.

Wait... don't I mean 7 years ago, in 2001?

No, I mean ten years ago, when the CIA, FBI, NSA, State Department and INS coordinated a dragnet to capture al Qaeda guys trying to enter the US through Mexico, with entrance visas acquired in South America.

(Yes, shocking, it turns out that prior to the Current Occupant, the national intelligence agencies apparently had no trouble coordinating their counterespionage efforts.)

The story ran in the New York Times, one brief article (which never made it onto their web archives), of how a minor embassy functionary in Paraguay, tipped off by the rap sheet the CIA was circulating, caught one of the guys in question.

The CIA came and collected him, disappeared, and within a short time the rest of the guys had either been captured too or abandoned their operation. Nobody died, nothing exploded, and so nobody in the US really took notice.

(Admittedly I might not have either if I didn't know a couple of people involved. They were quite happy to talk about it — again, what a surprise, it turns out that effective national security doesn't actually require a blanket insistence on absolute secrecy on all matters, all the time.)

Clearly the CIA was operating in a grey area there. But are all grey areas equal? Was it better to have rendered a bunch of crazed lunatics harmless in that case, or for them to have succeeded and blown up a few buildings full of people?

Having won the election, and unencumbered by crass political considerations (as supporters insisted he was during the campaign), Obama will soon be free to order investigations of illegal wiretapping during the Bush presidency. How likely are those investigations, if one of the architects of Bush's illegal surveillance is ensconced in the CIA? The question answers itself.

It was clear under Bush that his cabinet appointees and other advisors had a massive influence on policy, both because Bush was incredibly hands-off and also seemed to be willing to be led around by those surrounding him. When Obama chose Biden no one assumed that it is Biden who is going to be leading policy for the Executive Branch, while with Bush it has always been assumed that Cheney has massive influence on just that.

While some of Obama's choices have not maybe been ideal, I think a stong case can be made that Obama is not going to be like Bush in this respect.

He's surrounded himself by people who are not always going to agree with him, and he'll take their input under advisement but I don't think he's going to be a willing stooge like G.W.