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.

So here's another reason to question the judgement, if not the sanity, of those who - like all my liberal friends, Sarah Palin, and Stalin - believe whole-heartedly in the "power of government to do good." We need these people to manage every aspect of our lives when they can't, in its second year of operation, make the simple software fix to adjust to their own stupid law? What a great idea!

Even if there were some reason to believe government has, does, or ever will act with the primary motivation of making you or me safer, freer, healthier, or richer - and why should they? - this also reminds us to ask:  what would make us believe they could if they wanted to?