The man still isn't President and hasn't done one damn thing to change policy and you are acting like you are giving a review of his administration eight years from now. The audacity seems to come from LGBT people who have no hope to begin with. Don't expect me to buy this "theory" of yours, Mattilda.

Many of his statements on Israel/Palestine have been particularly troubling. Same with the sabre-rattling on Afghanistan (sorry, folks! forcibly establishing a "free" democracy in another country was a bunk idea from the start; the US was doomed for failure if the actual goal was the welfare of the Afghan people).

Some folks on the left need to get their heads out of their asses and realize Obama's not their friend. He's a politician, one who I'd still argue is better than Bush, but still a politician.

But there has been significant pressure from the right. I just think we've learned to ignore it because it's become white noise.

Monica makes a good point, but I agree with some of your criticisms. I think "hope" is really "hogwash" because he's already proven that hoping he'll do the right thing won't make him do it.

You're right - there is little hope he'll abolish the insurance companies that are preying on our lives to make a buck. His healthcare plan does nothing more than make the insurance companies richer at the expense of losing a little bit of the control they have now.

Since they have a death grip on us all now, I'm sure they're OK with just a choke-hold and more money.

I'm willing to give the guy a chance to prove himself before condemning him, but I'm not a believer in hope - at least not the kind of hope Obama is trying to sell. There's only so much he can do to change Washington and he's sold it like he was going to sweep the town clean and fill it with unicorns, rainbows and glitter.

Still, I think he deserves his "first 100 days" honeymoon to see how things are gonna shake out.

Mattilda, I love it that you always manage to say what I'm thinking. My best friend summed up the Rick Warren debacle like this. "Change you can't believe in."

I love that all the Obama hopefuls say that he is making concessions to the right in order to bring everyone into his big tent. But where is the reciprocal move to bring the right further left? Oh, right . . . there isn't one.

I'm not convinced that Obama will be any better on LGBT issues than Clinton was. We'll have to wait and see. While I don't think he'll be the progressive savior some have made him out to be, I do think he'll end up doing more to make us happy than Bubba did. But again, time will tell.

What I am convinced of is that everyone who is ready to judge his administration before the man is even inaugurated needs to settle down. How can you even back up a statement like "Obama continues to move to the right" when he hasn't passed any actual policy yet? Yes, he's said some things I don't like. But Bill Clinton was an amazing talker who screwed us royally on the policy front. To me, Obama's actions as President will speak louder than his words.

Good lord people, can you let the man be president for 2 seconds before you start reading him the riot act? Jesus. Calm down.

Faith, hope, devotion to the One True Leader and similar frivolities are for children and superstitious folk, the kind who think that The Exorcist was a documentary.

That nonsense has nothing to do with politics. For serious advocates of GLBT equality, an end to the war and an end to the economic looting of the rich all we have to go on are the words and deeds of politicians. By any standard Obama’s a right centrist who’s rapidly moving further right. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the people thoughtless enough to vote for him and he’ll screw us just as badly as Bush or Clinton. Neither party has a chance in hell of finding a way out of losing a war while the country slides into depression.

The problem Matilda notices with ‘progressive and radical-identified’ is to be sure their delusional hope and faith in the One True Leader but it has another component. These people pushed to get Obama elected for partisan reasons. They’re Democrats like Alex who ignored Obama’s prowar position and now whimper about it, who ignored his open bigotry and now seem shocked that he’s still acting like a bigot and who don’t have a clue about the real relations between politicians and the uberrich. Those are the relations of political prostitutes and their clients. Clearly Obama is a lap dog for the looting rich, but why that might be important seems to have escaped ‘progressive and radical-identified’ Democrats.

Those who leave the Democrat party and become part of the independent left, and especially those who help build a LGBT left may gain some credibility and those who don’t leave the Democrats won’t. They’ll have to realize that if elections provided a vehicle for change they’d be outlawed. They’ll have to give up the thrill of electing another in an endless succession of lesser evils and begin to use elections as an organizational and educational tool for real change, fundamental change.

With an unwinnable war and an impending depression on the near horizon American society faces a national political crisis like the ones of 1776 and 1860. It’s long past time to step out of the last closet, the political closet and help prepare to make sure the crisis ends on our terms, not theirs.

Thank you Mattilda, thought provoking as always including the comments. I regret that more attention was not given to the desperate need to demilitarize our country. Renew ourselves as a defensive country rather than an offensive country. We spend untold fortunes on weaponry, bases and a bloated over sized military.

We basically provide (for free) the military protection for Japan, S. Korea, Germany all of which are remnants of treaties from the Second World war, Cold war and the Korean war. Useless old agreements that go on forever. We provide huge quantities of what we call "foreign aid" in the way of bombs, bullets, tanks and planes while the real needs of human survival go under answered.

We blindly support Israel even when she is wrong basing it on them being "nicer" than their neighbors. I think it has a lot more to do with other things. I would imagine you have read "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" which clearly demonstrates how we have thrown away our credibility and good will through support of the policies of oppressing Palestinians. Why does the world hate us? Look in the mirror.

Some folks on the left need to get their heads out of their asses and realize Obama's not their friend. He's a politician, one who I'd still argue is better than Bush, but still a politician.

Alex, your words sum up my opinion succinctly!

In general, Obama and the Democrats are behaving as if the last election was not a repudiation of Bush and the Republican Party. Once again, the Dems seem intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I never expected Obama to be progressive, but even I have been disappointed by some of his first moves, particularly Rick Warren, Robert Gates, and his silence on the Israeli slaughter in Gaza.

I'm still hugely relieved it's not President Elect McCain, however!

Is all of this a form of Hillery-envy? I wonder if all of this exercise in ESP would have the same results if Hillery was the President-Elect? Seems that some LGBT think they are absolutely, positively sure what Obama will do for the next four years, when they have a difficult time figuring out what they are going to do in the next four days.

The Myan Calendar ends Dec 21, 2012 and the next year with peak solar flares is 2012, so all of this will soon be a moot point. Bend over and kiss your asses good-bye. (See, I can be just as ridiculous as the rest of you.)

Thank you Mattilda. As usual, you hit the nail on the head. Except I don't think it's "false hope". I prefer to call it "willful delusion".