Was Arty G a satire as well, or teh real deal Special Person?

-- kovie

I don't know about "real deal Special Person", but he really does think that his nearly relentless lectures prove him to be superior to everyone else on the face of the earth.

One way or another, there's nothing to do but see how all this plays out.

I feel no particular compulsion to have certainty about any of it, just yet.

Your self-assured and uncritical assumptions about Obama, while their polar opposite, are as silly and unfounded as those being made by Obamabots. "He's selling us out you fools" is as moronic and unprovable as "He's smarter than you so STFU".

Or was this yet more snark that I'm JUST NOT GETTING? Someone help me here. It is precisely such comments that make it hard for me to tell the difference.

Regarding the notion of high-level cabinet appointments not being particularly important...

I'm wondering if this is an artifact of the Bush Presidency. I'm remembering the revolving door of Bush appointees, and how little power certain appointees actually had. (Colin Powell or Gale Norton are the examples that spring to mind.) I'm certain this has altered some people's perceptions of cabinet appointments. They sort of violated a taboo.

I'm a little surprised by the degree to which I and other people are fretting over these. Maybe this signals something bad, maybe this is "keep your enemies close", or maybe this is Obama - mindful of the lessons the Bush administration taught - taking control of the national conversation... assuming this unfortunate appointment is happening at all.

And is keeping government continuity at the outset of a Presidency a good thing? I'm trying to imagine a world in which George Bush had kept certain Clinton appointees in the area of national security, back in 2001.

unfortunately, it morphed in your mind into "pillar". You thereby revealed your sex, I'm afraid.

Your logic is totally feminine I'm afraid.

I don't know about "real deal Special Person", but he really does think that his nearly relentless lectures prove him to be superior to everyone else on the face of the earth.

Which is basically the same thing, thus the ironic quotation marks. "Special Persons" are people who appear to believe themselves "to be superior to everyone else on the face of the earth", when in reality they're just arrogant and intolerant mini Castros who lecture everyone in sight and never in any way allow for the possibility that they might sometimes be wrong.

Digby recently banned a whole bunch of them for being insufferable condescending bores who kept lecturing lesser beings about how stupid and clueless they were. Arty G seemed of that ilk.

Glenn Greenwald isn't bone stupid, he is working for Joan Walsh.

__________________________________

A latecomer on weekdays, as always, I see that Glenn has already directly responded to this comment.

Still, I feel constrained to remark that while the first clause is true enough, it's damning with faint praise.

But as for the second clause: I would say that, if anything, Glenn is working against Joan Walsh. Heartfelt praise and kudos to him for so doing!

I regret the indelicacy of praising Glenn at the expense of his host, but after too many months of the rest of Salon boiling down to Moderate Liberals Wuv Bonnie Prince Barack, and hate, hate that awful, awful Sarah Palin to pieces, it is incontrovertibly the case that Glenn's fiefdom here is an island of profound insight and intellectual rigor aspiring to, and often achieving, excellence.

A Mantra

Too Much

For Me

Da-Da

Too Much

Da-Ta

Always have the inside track

I too have no certitude

What the rest 'o y'all

Don't lack...

I hope the person you are married to/paired up with is extremely nice. I'd hate to think of someone nasty actually taking advantage of your extreme, naive enabling.

.....Mackerel!!!

Okay, this is where I make a definite break with Obama. This is where he unmasks himself.

I will burn my Obama t-shirt and see if I can't get my campaign donation back.

To me, this is serious, serious stuff.

This is a slap in the face out of nowhere.

Yo, 'Bama, don't count on any kind words from me anymore.

More D.C. rumors and more premature finger-wagging from the purity police based on nothing more than anonymous "reports" and your frantic desire to misinterpret others' disagreement as their intellectual inadequacy. Did it ever occur to you guys aren't taken seriously precisely because you appear mentally incapable of framing an argument in a way that doesn't drip with your narcissistic disdain for anyone who slightly deviates from your ideological dictates? The hyperemotional persecution complex alone is enough to turn your allies off. Hell, I generally agree with you on the substance and I'll be pissed if this rumor does pan out, but you need to step out of this moralistic echo chamber and figure out why you guys provoke reactions like Hildebrand's. And no, it's not because you're so obviously right, no matter how much you would like to tell yourselves that. Believe it or not, people have debated over much more important issues without acting like giant, strawmen-pummeling assholes in the process. You should try it sometime.

Someone has already mentioned Scott Ritter.

I could mention Paul Pillar.

Some have mentioned Richard Clarke.

One doesn't have to pick a CIA chief from inside the CIA, there are actually quite a few choices.

My favorite is Pillar.

That brings out all the half wits?? Jaysus Murphy, and the hell with all those healthy, yet frail egos out there.

kitt (sometimes lucid, sometimes lunatic, and always ready to tell ya to phawk off with the drop of a hat) goes into kitchen sink lawyer / philosopher mode. Please, it's bad enuff when you try to goad and get someone's goat with the old, "So what you're saying is . . . blah blah blah". But that old stinker, the double mind-numbing knucklehead kneejerk, "So now you're not only saying that most of the posters here are . . . blah blah blah . . but you're also saying that . . . blah blah blah". Jaysus, two junior master-debating points rolled up in one. And then you end your roll with the forehead-slapping, eyerolling finale, "So are you calling . . . blah blah blah?" Sweet Jaysus, man, bone stupid is not even in the same neighbourhood as being embarrassingly inane. I await your "Go phawk yourself" with stoicism . . .