"It was said during the presidential campaign that one of the candidates was running for George W. Bush’s third term. Did you think it was Obama?"

That line was pulled from this article at MWC News. Interesting. So many people during this last election were filled with so much hope in one of the two mainstream candidates--either for the liberal Messiah on the left or the hard-liner hero on the right. I watched in utter disgust, as only thin lines separated the true essence of each candidate. Sure, the news did their duty in expanding the crack in the sidewalk to the size of the Grand Canyon to point out such stark contrasts between the two, but if you stop and think, the candidates were both headed in the same direction--away from freedom and liberty and toward increases in state power. How they planned to do this hardly matters, for the destination is the same.

Now some of the liberals watching the scene with less fog in their eyes are sinking into the inevitable disillusion of following a false prophet. They've been betrayed, to be sure, just as they were in 2006 when the Democrats regained the majority in House and Senate. This is the same old story, but is happening to the supporters on the left at the exectutive level this time. And I'm increasingly running across articles bemoaning this fact of late. More from the MWC article here:

Obama has clearly adopted not only Bush’s policies, but also his premise: that the United States is in a war in which the world is the battlefield and restraints on the power of government are a luxury we can’t afford. He has dropped the more realistic view that acts of terrorism are crimes — provoked by years of U.S. intervention — that can be dealt with through normal procedures that protect basic freedoms.

It is instructive that the neoconservatives who gave us the Bush war program are now delighted with Obama’s policies, including his escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This all should be troubling to anyone who thinks elections can bring needed change. Presidents come and go, with little obvious effect on foreign policy, no matter what they say during their campaigns. Republican and Democrat, right and left — those terms are more about style than substance. In subtle ways and with staunch corporate media support, the system maintained by the ruling elite ensures that no successful national candidate will deviate too far from its plumb line. The marginalization of real anti-war candidates during the 2008 election was just the latest demonstration.

Funny--I've been thinking exactly the same thing. Tyranny hides behind the strangest masks.