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Letters
Monday, December 8, 2008 12:00 AM

Gen. Hayden and the claimed irrelevance of presidential appointments

Since when did people start believing that high-level appointments and Cabinet secretaries were irrelevant?

The letters thread is now closed.

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Monday, December 8, 2008 03:14 PM

Here he is again my friend

Popped right by to say

"Hi Glenn again"

Who knows why or

Even when again

Stinky days are here again!

Monday, December 8, 2008 03:13 PM

If Amity is a Princess Bride fan he/she is OK by me.

I picked up the earlier satire. Only people of E-man and Shooter's ilk could actually pen Amity's schtick and believe it. I thought it was classic. Almost as classic as "never gamble with a Sicilian when death is on the line, uh ha ha ha ha ack #* ack uhhhhh."

Monday, December 8, 2008 03:13 PM

Sometimes

there are practical reasons for wanting to hold someone in a post like CIA director over, in the transition between presidential administrations.

The big question- too early to answer- is whether Hayden will stay on, beyond a few months; and, if not, who his replacement will be.

Monday, December 8, 2008 03:10 PM

My dear Kitt,

"Are you so "Bone Stupid" that you are unaware that you've just called Glenn Greenwald -- along your idea of what constitutes "most of the posters here" -- "Bone Stupid"? After all, Glenn Greenwald expressed his disagreement with your 50 pages of 'birth certificate' bellowing."

Most of posters here are BONE STUPID and I am aware of what I posted. Glenn Greenwald isn't bone stupid, he is working for Joan Walsh.

I am not certain what you are trying to say. Maybe I should down a fifth of Southern Comfort and reread your post and see if it makes any sort of sense. My guess is that even if I were floor hugging stinking drunk that your words would still not parse properly.

If you can hear my "bellowing" over the internet, I would suggest changing your medication. But if I did bellow, your eardrums would have ruptured and clocks would have to be reset within a five mile radius.

feel free to respond after your man Obama has releaased a documnet from 1961.

CHEERS!

Monday, December 8, 2008 03:09 PM

@Derbig

Is that your real name? Well, I never!

Monday, December 8, 2008 03:05 PM

Derbig Mooser.

~

One cold dank Monday evening, somewhere south of a Batangan, Peninsula,

war advocates came across an abandoned flute. There was no pair of monks.

They tended a small garden with a water buffalo. A ox plowed, but no spoke.

The ox-plow knew no English. A plow beast was displeased. Why dig foxhole?

The monks performed a washing motion with the hands. A simple pantomime.

Walls inside a pagoda were bullet ridden, walls crumbled, and it was bad news.

O, it was a very painful reality. A GI advocate of a just war advocated murders?

O, a memory: Today. My best friend and a visitor guest at the boondocks Place?

O, bright Ivy vines are tied and woven: Harvest sage, lavender, fragrant bouquet.

Pedinska and my Granddaughter were giggling this morning. O, make a sachet.

I love making two silly girls a perfumed bouquet of thyme etc., tie with green ivy.

Monday, December 8, 2008 03:03 PM

kovie on classic mistakes

never try to joke with someone in a ranting sort of mood.

Is that like fighting a land war in Asia?

Oh, wait, we're already fighting two.

Maybe we'd have a better change going up against Don Obama when death is on the line.

Monday, December 8, 2008 02:57 PM

GlennGreenwald on satire

Hmf. I guess everyone will have to decide for themselves if they trust GlennGreenwald's judgment. Next thing you know he'll have an opinion column.

I will say, about the CIA, I'm honestly conflicted.

Glenn (rather incisively) once commented with respect to the "Jack Bauer" scenario that some people were kicking around (where "we have to torture someone to save the world from imminent nuclear destruction" or some such) that if something like that ever actually happened, nothing said that the interrogators had to be prosecuted.

But the reality is that there already have been situations somewhat similar — one reason (among many) why the "what if?" trolls were off base from the beginning — and we as a people have effectively said that we'll overlook minor transgressions.

As with American naval power, I wonder if the world might come to appreciate force majeur only once it's gone.

Monday, December 8, 2008 02:56 PM

We need more Glenns

Starting from Rahm Immanuel the refrain has been Obama is the one who will set policy and the rest will implement. That is, we will replace one "decider" with another one albeit more adroit one. This is complete horse s**t. This is a government Obama is going to run, not a crime family. We need a vibrant band of progressive bloggers to keep us informed and keep Obama's feet firmly in the fire. We need many more Glenns.

Thanks Glenn ....

Monday, December 8, 2008 02:56 PM

Glenn

Not the first time, nor likely the last, I must admit, but thanks anyway.

And, honestly, as I mentioned above, I'm just not in the mood for irony these days. I'm not angry, just impatient. Irony was a way of coping with 8 years of Bush and useless Dems. Now it just feels like it gets in the way, in that it feels good but accomplishes little, and takes away from the immense tasks ahead. I'd much rather talk some sense into people who actually believe the nonsense that Amity satirizes and maybe get a few of them to finally grow up, than merely mock them. I may even have managed to do so over FISA, some months ago.

Plus, as anyone who's familiar with my comments here and elsewhere knows, I'm hardly immune to the irony bug myself. I just don't always feel like engaging in it.

Ok, maybe I am a wee bit angry. Mostly at the Obamabot types that Amity satirizes. And at Bush & Co. for not having gone away yet. And at Dems who continue to enable them and their policies, and who will prove once more to be thorns in the side of progressives once Obama is in office, by refusing to support them, if not actively opposing them.

I.e. never try to joke with someone in a ranting sort of mood.

;-)

Monday, December 8, 2008 02:54 PM

Okay, that's that!

I guess I'm the only one here who always and consistently comments under my own name, and no other. How completely unsophisticated!

Okay, now that I've been made a complete fool of, (a feeling which rankles no matter how intimate my familiarity with it) I am gonna show you guys how this multiple-identity sock-puppet game is played. Consider this your first and only warning.

From now on no one on this site can be sure who they are, or who I am, or was, or will be. "Toby or not Toby?", you will ask yourself every time a bloodhound walks by!

You guys wanna play sock-puppets? Okay, game on!

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