In fact, true progressives oppose all the above and as a result do not want Obama's agenda on these points to succeed. Vanden Heuvel best go back to calling herself a liberal, because for them, it’s an agenda, sadly, they can live with.

It was a fairy-tale premise: Once upon a time, a charismatic prince appeared magically and gave an inspiring, instantly famous speech. Four years later, he was leading the most powerful kingdom in the world from the brink of disaster.

Urge President Obama to live up to his Nobel Peace Prize by ending, not escalating, the war in Afghanistan.

"I'm not going to just sit by the curb and let these folks get away with a lack of performance for the American people," he said, speaking of Washington's Democratic leadership as a whole. "...I'm one of the many Americans who are losing patience."

We have assigned a wealth of practical tasks to those who think in abstractions, speak in cliches, use paperwork as a pacifier, and convert morality, policies and human aspiration into a bunch of numbers or legal restrictions.... With this shift, the country has been changing from being a democracy into being just another corporation...

A leading global environmental group has accused the United States of holding up UN climate negotiations....Karen Orenstein of Friends of the Earth U.S. said..."Unfortunately for the survival of people and the planet, the Obama administration's position at these UN negotiations sounds frighteningly similar to that of (former U.S. president) George Bush."

President Obama's proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in "prolonged detention" inside the U.S. without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.

Barack Obama is a brand...designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East.

[The Obama administration might] auction only a portion of the [greenhouse gas] emissions allowances granted...under a cap-and-trade system... [which] would please electric utilities and manufacturers but could anger environmentalists.

President Barack Obama told some of the nation's leading CEOs that he is ready to talk about lowering corporate income-tax rates and could compromise on his plan to combat global warming.

We're going to have to get off the couch. And directly confront the three branches of our government. Obama's White House. The Democrat-controlled Congress. And the for-profit health insurance corporations.

"The force that will remain in Iraq undertaking this new mission will be sized -- and again, it's an estimate at this point because we're obviously several months out -- at around 35,000 to 50,000 forces," an official said.

Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism,” the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.

A review of Obama's first 56 selections for top jobs shows a marked tendency to choose old, white guys from the East Coast with credentials from elite universities.

Slowly over the last few weeks, some of Barack Obama's most fervent supporters have come to an unhappy realization: The candidate who they thought was squarely on their side in policy fights is now a president who needs cajoling and persuading.

Word has it that President Obama intends to appoint a task force the week after next which will be charged with "reforming" Social Security. According to inside gossip, the task force will be led entirely by economists who were not able to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which is giving the country its sharpest downturn since the Great Depression.

Leaders of a wide variety of national organisations and Congress are putting pressure on U.S. President Barack Obama to reconsider his predecessor's policies of allowing the use, transfer and production of weapons that have been shown to indiscriminately maim and kill civilians.

Have we learned nothing from Iraq? “When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the president on another tried-and-failed policy.” That was Sen. Barack Obama in January 2007.

We are shocked and deeply disappointed that the Justice Department has chosen to continue the Bush administration’s practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition and torture. This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course.

"You'll have to ask them why they think it's all right to discriminate," Scott said. He added that administration officials are "either offended by the idea of discrimination, or they're not."

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection say clean-coal technology is a fantasy. Peabody Energy Corp., the biggest U.S. coal producer, says another prominent Democrat has pledged to make the technology a reality: President Barack Obama.

That amounts to swapping taxpayers’ “cash for trash,” Stiglitz said yesterday in a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “You shouldn’t chase good money after bad. We’re talking about a national debt that’s very hard to manage.”

Given that the majority of Democrats in Congress, a larger majority of registered Democrats nationally, and an even larger percentage of those who voted for Obama opposed the decision to invade Iraq, it is particularly disappointing that Obama would choose his vice-president, chief of staff, secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security and special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq from the right-wing minority who supported the war.

Millions have served time in U.S. prisons for crimes that fall far short of those attributed to the Bush administration. Some criminals, it seems, are like banks judged too big to fail: too big to jail, too powerful to prosecute. What if we apply President Obama’s legal theory to the small guys? Why look back?

Two days after introducing what he heralded as the most sweeping ethics rules in American history -- ones that would "close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely" -- Obama waived those rules for his nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, William Lynn.

The head of the world's preeminent organization of climate scientists said President Barack Obama's stated emissions targets need to be strengthened to deal with the climate threat.

President Obama is asked point-blank whether he would appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate wrongdoing by the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless spying on Americans.

Obama has given the public a misleading impression about how soon and how many soldiers he plans to remove from Iraq. By using the term "combat troops," he slides over the fact that 100,000 mercenaries and up to 60,000 troops who could be easily used for combat purposes will remain.

Disturbing as well is the prominence of Duncan's belief in offering a key role in public education to the military. Chicago's school system is currently the most militarized in the country.

[Obama] chose Lawrence Summers to head the [National Economic] council and Timothy Geithner to be Treasury Secretary. Both are experienced at ramming free market policies down the throats of other nations. Both were disciples of Robert Rubin when he began to deregulate the financial industry as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary in the late 1990s.

President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects.

"I want to be realistic here, not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped," Obama said in an interview on ABC’s "This Week" program.

President-elect Barack Obama, who deliberately distanced himself from lobbyists during his campaign and his transition, appointed a defense contractor's lobbyist Thursday to become his No. 2 official at the Defense Department.

As president-elect, one of Obama's first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America's favorite lawyer to be the third in command at the Justice Department.

"Obama wants to re-create the Bush stimulus package for business," said Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal-leaning tax policy research group that generally is critical of corporate tax breaks...

Other things equal, public investment is a much better way to provide economic stimulus than tax cuts, for two reasons. First, if the government spends money, that money is spent, helping support demand, whereas tax cuts may be largely saved. So public investment offers more bang for the buck. Second, public investment leaves something of value behind when the stimulus is over.

Sign the petition for a Secure Green Future now.

Military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many American combat troops will stay behind as renamed "trainers" and "advisers" in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.

World-famous linguist, media critic and foreign policy analyst Noam Chomsky compares Obama's rhetoric with his actions so far.

Vice President Dick Cheney is calling President-elect Barack Obama's national security lineup "a pretty good team."

Maybe Ralph Nader was right in predicting that the same Wall Street hustlers would have a lock on our government no matter which major party won the election. I hate to admit it, since it wasn't that long ago that I heatedly challenged Nader in a debate on this very point.

Chris Bowers of the influential OpenLeft.com blog complained: "That is, over all, a centre-right foreign policy team. I feel incredibly frustrated. Progressives are being entirely left out of Obama's major appointments so far."

War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate. The poison of war courses unchecked through the body politic of the United States.

For the first time since 1994, the defense and healthcare industries gave a majority of campaign contributions to the Democrats - albeit bare majorities. They will expect to be first in line for loopholes from Obama.

President-elect Barack Obama, who vowed during his campaign that lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House," said through a spokesman yesterday that he would allow lobbyists on his transition team as long as they work on issues unrelated to their earlier jobs.

President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party.

President-elect Barack Obama is leaning toward asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in his position for at least a year, according to two Obama advisers. A senior Pentagon official said Mr. Gates would likely accept the offer if it is made.

Obama has asked conservative Clinton vet Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff -- it's not a good sign for progressives.

Senior campaign officials said Mr Obama...will also appoint at least two Republicans to senior cabinet positions.

[H]ere is some of the evidence gathered over the past months that should serve both as a warning and as a prod to progressives not to take today's dreams [about Obama] as a reasonable facsimile of reality...

Ross's close association with neoconservatives has deepened over the years, becoming especially pronounced in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He supported the invasion of Iraq and, during the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections, repeatedly teamed up with writers from groups like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to craft hard-line policies toward Iran.

Indeed, the Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, have actually voted with President Bush's agenda, making them complicit in his acts, not valiant opponents defending our liberties.

Aides to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) scheduled pricey luncheons, roundtables, readings, VIP receptions and policy dinners with campaign officials and advisers, offering donors a taste of his potential administration.

The well-advertised differences between John McCain and Barack Obama on the war in Iraq may obscure a consequential similarity between their hawkish views on the use of American military force in other places.

The three so-called presidential debates-really parallel interviews by reporters chosen by the Obama and McCain campaigns are over and they are remarkable for two characteristic-convergence and avoidance.

Big Coal is paying close attention to what the presidential candidates are saying about keeping coal part of the U.S. energy mix.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) voted in favor of the environment only 18 percent of the time this year, according to the annual environmental scorecard by the League of Conservation Voters. But he still trumped Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who got a zero for missing every environmental vote.

Despite their differences over how to pursue the US war in Iraq, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both want to send more American troops to Afghanistan. Both are wrong. History cries out to them, but they are not listening.

Both parties in Congress played important roles in setting the stage for the ongoing financial meltdown. They did so in moves that reflected not just their ideological priorities, but also the wishes of special interests that have spent millions aggressively lobbying Washington and contributing to lawmakers' campaigns.

Black lung, mining safety, acid rain, global warming -- it's hard to imagine anyone denying those facts of life today. Harder still to imagine anyone denying that coal is dirty, and will ever be clean.

Let's open the debates and have a vigorous and honest discussion about where this country needs to go. It will not only make for better television, it will make for better democracy.

The Wall Street crisis of 2008 was the inevitable culmination of decades of neoliberal economic policy, which views free markets and deregulation as the solution to every problem. Investigative journalist Naomi Klein explains how this dangerous ideology took hold throughout US academia and government, and why the Wall Street crisis should be for neoliberalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for Soviet Communism.

U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are reviewing their support for allowing individuals to import cheaper prescription drugs...

It is the "dirty little secret in town," said one financial-services lobbyist -- that after lambasting lobbyists on the stump, the candidates need their counsel on how to respond to a crisis with origins too complicated for most industry outsiders to understand.

Barack Obama and John McCain both say they want to change Washington as part of their bids to win the White House. But the price of getting close to the candidates seems a lot like business as usual.

Obama is not only selling out our environment, but displaying political behavior that does not stand its ground.

"The short answer is no," said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center, when asked if Obama could pay for it all. "We're talking about massive tax cuts, significant new spending priorities, and down the road we have enormous economic challenges, particularly on healthcare. Anyone who did first-grade math should be able to figure that out."

FDR said in his 1933 inaugural address that confidence would be restored to the extent ``we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.'' But he isn't on the ticket this year. Does either of the 2008 candidates get it?