The Obama campaign was about getting actively involved in rebuilding society, so why be surprised that he will not fix everything on his own. I think he has been saying this as strongly as he can within the realm of acceptable discussion in US politics.

He said he was the only thing between the mob and AIG did he not. Make it true for the medical insurance companies, for the private prison industries, for the drug war profiteers, for the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, for all the crooks on Wall street, or expect very minimal change from a man who`s hands are tied without an angry mob to threaten the powers that be.

At least LBJ wanted to do the right thing.

Nobody forced Obama to adopt Bush's entire authoritarian set of policies on the "war on terror" which ought to be named the war on the Constitution. Obama has gone out of his way to embrace, reinforce, and expand the most egregious and worst things about the Bush years. It is appalling. So the analogy with LBJ is particularly inapt. LBJ wasn't running around adopting segregationist policies and then saying "make me do the right thing." He was trying to pass the very things MLK was working for, he was just asking for more time. Obama deceived his supporters about being for the rule of law, transparency and open government. It's just that simple. He may say he is for those things, but you can't do what he has done and claim you are for those things and expect any but the most gullible to buy that swill.

I think so yes.

Howard Zinn wrote a great column prior to the election. He talked about how he was voting for Obama and he put that vote in perspective. He said of course one votes for Obama because he is better than the alternative just as one would have voted for FDR over Hoover. But, he reminded readers, FDR had to be pushed into action by radical demands being made upon him and pressure to act being put upon him. I think this is true with Obama and perhaps more true because frankly, I think FDR understood what terrible shape the country was in. I do not think Obama understands at all how bad a shape we are in and how our common people are hurting. He is a creature of the status quo and has been insulated for a long time from the realities of life for us little people. Until he sees the rage in action I think he will continue to think he can get away with the BS he's been peddling that last two months on Bush's policies of secrecy, torture and the like. I also think that's what it will take before he realizes more lip service about covering most people and then hopping in bed with the insurance parasites is not going to be satisfactory. Obama is a product of his political environment and that is Washington DC. He is a prototypical DLC politician which means he sees servcing the corporate interests and the interests of the powerful as job one. The people are an almost theoretical group because they aren't present at the negotiating lunches paid for by the lobbyists, etc...

It was never going to be an overnight transition as long as 99% of the government stayed the same.

I am a little disappointed that Obama hasn't really rocked the boat much with regards to his choices for the cabinet. Many of the same Clinton-era DLC types are in charge and the "solutions" they have offered are hardly innovative. Barack missed his first real opportunity to change the game by leaving the rules of the game essentially unchanged.

At the end of the day, though, absent bold leadership at the top, we are left with the ballot box as our only alternative. We are left with 18-percent average turnout for primary elections and 96% of all incumbents being reelected without a challenge. We are left to our own devices at a time when most people :don't do politics" as if it were a choice.

I am not sure how Obama envisioned the grassroots "forcing" him to change anything when most of the people in this country don't vote for anything on a regular basis except for the next American Idol.

Thank you SO MUCH FOR THE STRAWMAN!!! That really helps to further debate!! It is so simple isn't it, that those who are severely disappointed in what Obama has and hasn't done MUST be wishing that they've voted for McCain.

And anyone who pretends to be even remotely concerned about Torture should READ this article, right to the very end, to understand that Torture is STILL going on at Gitmo, now under the aegis of Obama. Torture that he could have simply STOPPED with an Executive Order immediately on day 1. It is NOT too much to ask of The ONE!! These are now Obama Thugs abusing prisoners at Git mo:

http://original.antiwar.com/scahill/2009/05/16/obama-thug-squad-brutalizing-prisoners-at-gitmo/

Why are the abuses STILL going on, and even "ramped up"?? And after issuing the Executive Order to close Gitmo, why hasn't the torture stopped, and why isn't this important enough for Obama to see to its implementation? Why is Spain the only HOPE of Gitmo detainees to force an end to the abuses?? Why is it UNREASONABLE of us to hold Obama to his words and demand that a crime be STOPPED??

Since a lot of the video tapes have been destroyed, the only tangible physical evidence left is the photographs apart from witnesses. Why should they not be released??

"Less than two weeks later, on Jan. 22, newly inaugurated President Obama issued an executive order requiring the closure of Guantánamo within a year and also ordered a review of the status of the prisoners held there, requiring "humane standards of confinement" in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

But one month later, the Center for Constitutional Rights released a report titled "Conditions of Confinement at Guantánamo: Still In Violation of the Law," which found that abuses continued. In fact, one Guantanamo lawyer, Ahmed Ghappour, said that his clients were reporting "a ramping up in abuse" since Obama was elected, including "beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-force feeding detainees who are on hunger strike," according to Reuters."

"As the abuse continues at Guantánamo, and powerful congressional leaders from both parties and the White House fiercely resist the appointment of an independent special prosecutor, the sad fact is that the best chance for justice for the victims of U.S. Torture may well be an ocean away in Madrid, Spain.

"The Obama administration should not need pressure from abroad to uphold our own laws and initiate a criminal investigation in the U.S.," says Vince Warren, CCR’s executive director. "I hope the Spanish cases will impress on the president and Attorney General Eric Holder how seriously the rest of the world takes these crimes and show them the issue will not go away."

I do love Sting.