Same goes for Krugman. If it weren't for him and Greenwald, sometimes I swear, I'd open up a vein.

If this will help, Obama camp said it's "prepared to talk with Hamas."

Subtitle is "Incoming administration will abandon Bush's isolation of Islamist group to initiate low-level diplomacy, say transition sources"

Not just a break with BushCo, but a shift from Obama's repeated early stance. During his campaign he distinguished himself by saying that he was in fact willing to talk to Americas enemies except for Hamas.

Although here is a different story from Israeli press today:

"Sen. Obama strongly opposes talking to Hamas, a terrorist group committed to Israel's destruction. As president, he will work to isolate Hamas and target its resources, and rejects any dialogue until Hamas recognizes Israel, renounces terrorism, and abides by previous agreements."

No, he hasn't officially taken over, but the Brennan appointment and some of his other decisions are showing us once again that he's not really going to be changing much - he'll still be giving speeches that lull people into thinking he will, but behind the scenes it will be mostly business as usual.

Some people may be willing to give the Brennan appointment a pass, but I think if you are serious about ending the policies of torture and rendition and the wholesale collection of data on Americans, you don't install someone in your administration who has a company that specializes in the technology related to that collection, among other things, and that is in turn owned by a larger company that specializes in "security solutions," a la Blackwater and other groups that allow the US to outsource torture.

More disturbing to me is that Brennan is being given domestic responsibilities - and I worry how he will be using his "experience" in this country; kind of puts Obama's FISA vote in a whole new light, I think.

Many strong Obama supporters seemed to believe it was just political posturing and did not relate to the real policies he would enact.

The Obama team could decide to keep the CIA facilities under a modified framework and, for the first time, allow them to be visited by monitors from the Red Cross. But some experts believe that it is more likely that the U.S. will shut down the CIA prisons and rely more heavily on "extraordinary renditions," the practice of turning captives over to the custody of other countries.

Obama is going to prove over and over again that he regards his judgment as being so superior that he can make exceptions to whatever hard-and-fast standards he established as Candidate Obama, and that no one should find such exceptions troubling in the least.

George W. Obama? Or Hillary R. Bush?

It's unfortunate that whoever the nominee was could have been forced to the left a long time ago.

But "pragmatism" won the day. Or rather fear won the day, and the (continued) selling, and buying, or fear, is what won him the presidency.

We are a too easily manipulated society. Voluntarily.

An Obama would now have an unassailable mandate and would not now be pandering to republicans or wingnut terrorists like Brennan.

Unless he is one of them?

The whole situation right now is utterly stupid, imo.

Once people vote their leverage evaporates.

Maybe enough people will smarten up in time for 2012, but I doubt it. People have the power to turn everything upside down, lead the followers in Washington, and force them to do the right things. But people buy fear too easily.

My first, of many, experiences with this sort of thing, was as a Jr. in college.

For the previous two years I and many of my fellow students had watched with disbelief the decisions and actions of our Student Senate. Our SS had a pretty serious budget back then, in excess of $500,000 if I remember correctly.

Anyway, I went and campaigned and got my own bad self elected to the Senate to shake some sense into these people.

Then I sat in the meetings and learned the constraints and issues they had to deal with found that with very few exceptions the decisions made were essentially the right ones. And even the "wrong" ones were mostly only fractionally or debatably wrong.

I could describe innumerable similar experiences, both small and large.

On Tuesday, the U.S. president-elect, Barack Obama, said Americans should get used to the prospect of "trillion-dollar deficits for years to come" as he seeks to finance an $800 billion economic stimulus package.

Normally, China would be the most avid taker of the debt required to pay for those deficits, mainly short-term Treasury securities. In the past five years, China has spent as much as one-seventh of its entire economic output on the purchase of foreign debt - largely U.S. Treasury bonds and American mortgage-backed securities.

But now, Beijing is seeking to pay for its own $600 billion economic stimulus - just as tax revenue falls sharply as the Chinese economy slows. Regulators have ordered banks to lend more money to small and midsize enterprises, many of which are struggling with slower exports, and Chinese bankers say they are being instructed to lend more to local governments to allow them to build new roads and other projects as part of the stimulus program.

"All the key drivers of China's Treasury purchases are disappearing," said Ben Simpfendorfer, an economist in the Hong Kong office of the Royal Bank of Scotland. "There's a waning appetite for dollars and a waning appetite for Treasuries. And that complicates the outlook for interest rates."

On the plus side they added this...

The shift could pose some challenges to the U.S. government in the near future but eventually may even produce salutary effects on the world economy.

The guy defended his boss.  He was not part of DoO.  

He is considered a Middle East expert,having been there for a couple of decades and is known as a man with ''unrivaled integrity''.