Not pictured: choice or change.

Isn't it clear Barack Obama is the most conservative president ever? Or at least for a long time?

Bush expanded the size, cost, scope, and of course the power of government more than any president for decades, more than any non-wartime president ever. He signed into law about two-thirds of the national-health package formerly known as HillaryCare. Regulations and government spending exploded. He ended his administration by floating a colossal spending-orgy bailout bill - which was dwarfed by the real bailout, the ten-plus billion dollars cranked out by the Fed to boost the economy.

And no president has ever worshiped the power of government to do good more fervently in word (leaving aside a few obligatory mumbles about "small government") or deed. Bush promised to remake the world in America's image by killing everybody who opposed democracy. Even by voting.

What's more liberal than that? Doesn't progressivism mean forcing people to think and speak they way you want them to, for their own good?

Obama promised more war on the campaign trail - and selected a Secretary of State who ran furthest to the right on foreign policy of any candidate, including shrill war-loving harpy Sarah Palin. And they've delivered the goods: the war in Iraq continues (just without anyone reporting on it anymore); the Afghan War has been extended to war on US ally Pakistan, and is now being expanded. The US has increased its military bridgehead in South America, and now, of course, is rolling out the same lies used to sell the aggression against Iraq to peddle Obama's promised war with Iran - all while expanding the US offense budget more than Bush proposed.

At home he's reduced transparency in government, absolved telcoms of illegally helping the US spy on Americans, continued the cover-up of torture, and is almost certain to extend the expiring provisions of the ironically-named PATRIOT Act. Which after all started life under Bill Clinton as HR 666 (and what's more conservative than perpetuating Democratic misdeeds?)  And finally he's shipped trillions of more dollars, mostly via the Fed, to the very rich.

What's more conservative than that? Isn't conservativism all about forcing people to think and speak they way you want them to, for their own good?

Isn't it really clear that there's no functional difference among candidates? That no one will ever be allowed into a position where it's possible for them to be elected unless they agree to further the agenda of the Almighty State (and serve the interests of those who run it for their own profit) ? That the US ruling class figured out a very long time ago that the best way to rig an election is to do it before it ever takes place?

Remember, folks - the power of government to do good stands on two legs, and two legs only: murder and inflation. What government does is milk the many to enrich the few. Murder and inflation are how they do it.

Feel free to guess how I'd fill in the blank above.

The new administration has already bettered its predecessor by expanding the illegal (and unwinnable) war in Afghanistan to an illegal, unwinnable war on Pakistan, a US ally.  Now, after a ritual display of phony reluctance to mollify world opinion, plus those four or five US leftists who haven't turned into Limbaugh-like werewolves thirsting for the blood of swarthy foreigners with the inauguration of a Democratic-brand president,  the US is caving into Israeli demands which include  "massive new sanctions against the Iranian government."

This is likely a major step toward the US attack on Iran that's been hanging fire for years, awaiting the proper pretext to launch.

Meanwhile the US is looking to increase its military presence in Colombia. Aside from embroiling the US in yet another civil war, which US interference will inevitably make worse - look how well US drug-war "assistance" to Mexico has panned out - look for the bigger Colombian footprint to provide a launch-point for indirect, and eventually direct, military action against Venezuela.

And, after all, how were the Clinton years anything but an extension of Bush I? While Bush II's policies - expanding war, the USA PATRIOT Act (HR 666 recycled!), burgeoning wealth transfers to the power elite - were nothing Clinton hadn't done or tried to do. And Obama has made it clear "change" means "the same, only more and harder."

He's blatantly planning a massive expansion of US military assaults on the rest of the world. There's no money for this. The military is broken. It doesn't matter: this "administration" - or what we probably should call the power elite's new management team - is no more reality-based than the one about to be flushed.

Clearly, The O-Bomber's a stooge; clearly, the same people pull his strings as did the two Bushes and Bush Sr.'s smarter, adoptive son Slick Willie. And who'd've pulled McCain's if voters had decided to elect an overtly mad, evil old reptile instead of a handsome young demagogue (with a Nuremberg Rally-friendly constituency!)

Meanwhile the Mad Christers who wanted to set the world ablaze so the demon they imagine is Jesus could return to assert dominion are on their way out - well, except for right-wing fundie Hillary Clinton, who belongs to the Mad Christer DC insider group called the Fellowship. (See also here.) But bizarrely the secularist nuts who were equally responsible for executing the mad US-vs-the-World program are still firmly entrenched.

After all, how did Clinton's overtly fascist "neoliberals" differ from Dumbya's overtly fascist "neocons? " Barely if at all, in rhetoric or policy. Just the switching-in of meaningless syllables: "conservative" for "liberal." And now back.

Of course the same people are still in charge. At the top, as well as in the lower, public ranks. People who possess real power may lose it through accident, incompetence, or action by their rivals. They do not suffer themselves to be displaced by majority vote of their livestock. Why in Hell should they? In what way is it rational to imagine that they would?

As some wise libertarian asked after the initial $700B bailout - the largest single transfer of wealth to the rich and powerful in known human history, even before it mysteriously expanded by an order of magnitude to north of $7 trillion - was enthusiastically endorsed by both major party candidates, "How can anybody doubt the existence of the Power Elite now?" (Or words to that effect - if you turn up the original quote + author please let me know, and I'll credit both.)

And the people who really run the show now (to the extent anybody does) are clearly too stupid to leave their homes without helmets and knee-pads; and entirely delusional into the bargain. The risk now isn't so much whether they'll destroy the US; that's in progress now, the only issue being the eventual body count. It's whether they'll, in their arrogant imbecility, will launch a global thermonuclear war that'll render the Earth untenable for human life.

A cheerful thought as we wait for the deflation to trough and the hyperinflation to kick in.