I knew I wouldn't always get what I want with Obama...

...but the last couple of days have really gotten me a little bit steamed. First Tom Vilsack as the Secretaries of Corn & Agribusiness and Ken Salazar as the Secretary of the Great Wide Open Resource Fields of the West. Now Obama is having Rick Warren give the invocation at the swearing-in ceremony. Am I infuriated? Or is it a chance for us to

As I noted here the other day, Vilsack is a schill for agribusiness. Michael Pollan noted yesterday on NPR:

"I was very disappointed in that news conference," he said, "not to hear Vilsack use the word 'food' — or 'eaters.' And the interests of everybody except eaters was discussed: farmers, ranchers, people concerned about the land."

And so, he said, it's difficult not to see the choice of Vilsack as "agribusiness as usual."

Pollution as usual running down the Mississippi making it into the nation's intestine, expelling all the shit we don't use and don't want and depositing it in the Gulf of Mexico. Garbage dumped on the food market as usual from the federally subsidized corn industry to make us fat. And of course, there's the beauty of corn-based ethanol produced so that Americans can further bloat ourselves in the short term at the expense of hungry people, our water, our soil, and our air. The same goes for Salazar and the big sky country of the western U.S. Is this just going to be more pilfering of soils?

Where is the vision for hope and change here? It might be there. I am skeptical. Dazzle me.

And now Rick Warren, the super-sized pastor of the super-sized Saddleback Church, that beacon of religious toleration and good works. That is, they're tolerant if you believe as they do and do the works you do because you long for salvation. At least, that's what some in the media, like Sarah Posner at The Nation would have us believe.

Let me say, I have amazingly little to agree with Warren about. He is a homophobe blinded by his sect's particular notions, so blinded that he, like James Dobson (with whom he only differs in tone), believes that gays are not owed the basic rights: "there are about 2 percent of Americans are homosexual, gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2 percent of the population...change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years." Marriage is a religious institution infected by the government. Being that this is the case, it is owed to every person able to love another and legitimately carry the civil and social contract it entails. To paraphrase Andrew Sullivan, what better way to enhance the social and cultural power of marriage than inviting a population of devoted people to use it? If marriage has been eroded, then strengthen it with new families who model its best aspects - fidelity, strength, courage, devotion, unity.

Warren's stance against abortion is positively antiquated. It is based on a conveniently-termed Biblical principle that says that life begins at conception. I think that the sperm that fertilized the egg before it was actually alive too and was destroyed in the process as its own integral being. Is that murder now? What about all of the tens of millions of sperm who die in their forced march toward death in their absolutely pitiful hopes to be the chosen one? Do they not matter? Did they have souls? How do you know or not? Is a blastocyst more "alive" than a chicken? Why does the particular status of a four-cell blastocyst have precedent over a living Afghan girl, the livelihoods of Amazonian tribes whose lives are seized by IMF and WTO-backed deforestation for agriculture, a kangaroo mother dying of thirst in Australia because of human-induced drought, a tiger in Sumatra whose habitat is sytematically burned out by multi-national corporations, or great apes in Africa and Asia living rich social and emotional lives? How is a blastocyst more imporant than those things?

It is not. It is a phantasm of religious conservatism that positively blinds us to the extensive pattern of abuse that humans really incur on one another and to our environment.

Warren. Warren. Warren. What should we think of Obama's overture? I think that we must point out what I already have. In so many ways, I think you are mistaken and we are angry with you. But I think we have to move on.

Where can we agree? How can we make an alliance built on compassion and intelligence? Perhaps we can do this by fighting AIDS in Africa together. Let's talk. Just know that we are watching and working. And now that Obama has allied himself with you, we watch him with the power of the ballot in our hands. You screw up, he takes the hit too. Actually, you've already hit him. Let me explain.

I think that the Constitution should prohibit you from proclaiming your particular religious notions on inauguration day. In fact, I suspect that Obama's courting you to do this is one of the grossest entanglements of church and state I can imagine. I find it abhorrent. While we might be able to work together to reduce the suffering of the world's people, you are not an elected or appointed official of the secular government and are poised to speak on matters of faith from the podium of the most powerful nation of the world. It is in some sense a real shame that you, a man capable of reaching millions with your own powerful media apparatus to spread the above garbage to the world, is about to use the U.S. president's podium as your pulpit.

We must talk to our enemies. I concur with Obama on this. We have to sit down with those to whom we might become hostile and work out our differences in compassionate and patient dialogue. It is a necessity. Perhaps you and Obama have been doing this all behind the scenes and we are seeing its fruit in this invitation.

Maybe this is just shrewd politics on Obama's part to get the "Obama's a Muslim" people out of his hair. That's politically smart I suppose. He is in a lose-lose situation on that. Who better to get than you?

This is all very confusing. I am mad. I am intrigued. Perplexed. Saddened.

Really, I wish it weren't happening.