Out with the old and in with the......same old shit just a slightly darker package. A few snippets (since I'm on dialup and cannot do vid/utube stuff):

Published on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 by Inter Press Service
Despite Obama’s Vow, Combat Brigades Will Stay in Iraq
by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Despite President Barack Obama's statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina Feb. 27 that he had "chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months," a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic U.S. Army combat unit in Iraq for six years, will remain in Iraq after that date under a new non-combat label.



Published on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 by the Washington Post

Obama Channeling Bush on State Secrets Claim
Like Predecessor, New Justice Dept. Claiming Privilege
by Carrie Johnson

Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House.

Published on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 by Creators Syndicate

Obama's Triple Surge Into Afghanistan
by Jim Hightower

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to war we go!

As President Barack Obama begins winding down the Bush war in Iraq, he is building up his own war farther east. We're told that it will be a new, expanded, extra-special American adventure in Afghanistan, involving a vigorous surge strategy to "stabilize" this perpetually unstable land.



Published on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 by Mother Jones

Panning Geithner's Plan: Why Treasury's Toxic Assets Program Stinks
by Nomi Prins

Though the stock market may have lifted off on news of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's purchase plan for toxic assets, don't be fooled by Wall Street's optimism. The plan is even worse than the one floated by Geithner's predecessor, Henry Paulson, last fall. At least Paulson wanted the government simply to buy the banking industry's junk outright-and spend less doing so.



Published on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 by Huffington Post

President Obama, Why Did You Pay Blackwater $70 Million in February?
by Jeremy Scahill

For those already outraged at the AIG bonus scandal, here is a fact that should add more fuel to the fire: The Obama administration has paid the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater nearly $70 million to operate in Iraq and, according to the Washington Times, may keep the company on the payroll months past the official expiration of its Iraq contract in May. I reviewed Blackwater's recent transactions with the Obama State Department and discovered a $45 million payment to Blackwater on February 4, 2009 for "protective services-Iraq." It is described as a "funding action only." Here is the interesting part: The estimated "Ultimate Completion Date" is 5/07/2011.



Published on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 by The Providence Journal

Obama is Far from a Radical Reformer
by John R. MacArthur

Assessing the gigantic new budget proposed by Barack Obama is hard enough, but the $3.6 trillion behemoth turns incomprehensible when left- and right-leaning journalists assigned to analyze it seem unable to separate wishful thinking from political reality.

An early skeptic about the left-handed phenom from Chicago, I've never had any illusions about Obama's commitment to left-wing "change." Yet that's exactly what pundits across the political spectrum say Obama is putting forth.

Of course, we heard it all before in the Clinton administrations - "Ah know you voted for chaiinge" - but the change Clinton had in mind was realigning the Democratic Party to the right of center, where he could raise more money for his political campaigns. Millions were thrown off welfare - while millions of unregulated "derivatives" were hurled into the debt markets, anti-union, anti-labor "free trade" pacts were passed and a pre-emptive war was launched against Serbia without U.N. consent.



Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment
by Robert Freeman

In early 1919, Germany put in place a new government to begin rebuilding the country after its crushing defeat in World War I. But the right-wing forces that had led the country into the War and lost the War conspired even before it was over to destroy the new government, the "Weimar Republic." They succeeded.