Sure, Obama's doing what he thinks will work best for him in the next 2 years...yeah. Naturally. And to do that, he has to thoroughly disappoint that 20% of Americans who call themselves "liberals".

But to me it just looks like business as usual in center-right corporate America, the only nation in the world where "socialism" is like a dirty word to most people.

That's about what I expected would happen, because that's what always happens in the USA...or it has since Reagan, at least. There is virtually no hope of any genuinely liberal administration taking power in the USA, and there never really was. The election was a great selling job that raised the hopes of American liberals and got all their votes, but I think that's all it was, just a brilliant selling job, and it worked primarily because people had utterly lost confidence in the Republicans after 8 catastrophic years under George Bush...so the Conservatives were very demoralized, and the election of the Democrats was therefore guaranteed, barring some incredible error in their campaign strategy....and that didn't happen. Obama ran a very smart campaign.

That did NOT mean the country in general was ready for a liberal government, however! No way. It just meant they were ready to dump the Republicans, that's all. Now the Democrats will do the usual thing that always happens in Washington, and the usual thing primarily benefits the corporate world, the banks, the CEOs...the rich elite. That's what happens in a center-right country. Mind you...it's even happening in basically much more liberal societies like Canada and the UK....so it's absolutely bound to happen in the USA.

Obama was elected as a supposed liberal hope. That was a mirage. Wishful thinking on the part of liberals. What he really is is a center-right politician, and he will pursue a pragmatic center-right policy in my opinion, and he will continue to fight unnecessary foreign wars for the military-industrial empire he commands, spend a fortune on the military, and do big favors for the rich corporate and banking elite...while making comforting noises to the general public.

The usual story. It's smoke and mirrors, and it's business as usual. Big Business as usual. They run the show.