Leaving aside the semantic quagmire in which terms like "center" are rooted, for all practical purposes "center" or "centrist" in inside-politics speech simply means "as far as possible from the Left".

Spiritual traditions teach that the mind has an objective mind that has been depicted as being on the 'right' side and a subjective mind depicted on the 'left' side. Republicans can be seen as being on the objective (or everything must be tangibly seen) and democrats as being on the subjective (or that what can be understood within is what is important). Yet these two points are on the same line and going to the center does not get you out of that paradox. The problem of centering is you do not get a detached view of that line or transcend to something better. The transcendent point in spiritual traditions is taught as being in the heart which is centered between yet as much above as the distance between the two polarities of the mind. That transcendent point Obama, unlike great presidents of the past, either knows not or ignores.

"My task is a simple one: to show you the way. You, my friends, have the difficult task of building a New World, a New Country, a new Truth; but together we shall triumph.
There are those among you now who know the Way, have walked the Path before, and can lead and save. My Brothers, the Masters of Wisdom, are your Friends and Guides. They will be among you and serve you and inspire you to great deeds, valiant acts; and They bring precious gifts of Wisdom and Love to place at your feet."
- Messages from Maitreya the Christ

Call me when the Assimilated Press "moves to" journalism.

Since a good portion of Obama's "base" stayed home in 2010, all the re-assignments and realignments in the world aren't going to bring them back unless something is done for the base that is truely "left" of what's been done so far. And with a House like the one they have to work with, that ain't likely. So no matter how much lipstick they apply, we're still screwed. The "base" will stay home in 2012, or some kind of viable 3rd party will form. I keep wondering why Labor & the Greens haven't seen the obvious here and joined forces.... they're the ones who got screwed the worst for their efforts. What's to lose?

Many of us would be delighted to see Obama move to the center. To do so, he would have to rid himself of all the Wall Streeters on his team (starting with Geithner), and appoint some progressives. He also would need to stop spending his time with CEOs and bankers, and talk to some real working people. In other words, Obama has moved from his center-right position further to the right, not leftward toward the center. Since much of the mainstream media are corporatists, and fail to report critically, we tend to get the Fox News version rehashed by most of the other outlets. This seriously impedes public understanding of the real issues and positions.

Daley is a "centrist" just like we've, "Always been at war with Eastasia." The propaganda machine is in high gear. When I was a kid we laughed at all those poor Russians who never got to hear the truth, just Pravda and Radio Moscow. Guess what?

Whoopee. The center of the cesspit. What a place to be.

That headline _should_ read:
"Center" moves even further to the Right."

The simple fact is that what the Media calls "center" is much further to the right than the right used to be, and what is now the right is WAY far beyond the wacko fringe of yesteryear.

The corporate media would have AmeriKKKans believe that Barry is a liberal, who is now courting the business interests in a bid to become more "centrist" or "moderate."

In actuality, Barry is a Manchurian candidate, who was bought and paid for by Wall Street banksters even as he was campaigning for "Change we can believe in."

The left wing in AmeriKKKa has been emasculated by the military industrial KKKomplex, the right-wing theocractic media and their whores in high office.

General strikes, boycotts and resistance are our weapons against the plutocracy.

It sure did not take long to turn our Republic into a Corporate Police State.

A book written in 1954 by Darrell Huff coined the new phrase: "How to lie with statistics". Huff demonstrated that the public could be easily bamboozled when correct data were represented in such a manner that they suggested either much worse or much better trends than the real ones. The hiring of Daley will perfect the White House's ability to lie with statistics. The Daley family has been supreme at lying (I lived in Chicago when his papa was mayor). The first 'bamboozle' has already been issued by the President himself. "1.3 million 'private' jobs were created by the Obama administration in 2010". True, but what was the median salary of these jobs compared to the median salary of the middle class wage earners before the crash of 2008? How many of these jobs are part time? And why is it that the unemployment rate has remained near 10 percent? Without the addition of such information the 1.3 million statement is not only meaningless but an attempt to bamboozle the nation into believing that the economy is on its way to healthy whatever that means. If the answer to my first question is that the median wages of these 1.3 million workers are well below that of middle class workers of 2007 then the economy is already on its way to a new disaster. The recovery from the Great Depression was robust because the median incomes in real purchasing power terms after WW2 were significantly larger than those before 1928. Of course Mr. Ed of the MSMBC "Ed show" fell for the ruse lock, stock, and barrel.

Q. The "center" of what?

A. A political spectrum defined by mass media.

My apologies to the following blob of words. I just don't have the energy right now to make it read better (e.g. an itemized list)

Yes, Obama the "socialist", that constantly reaches out, and then employs right wing capitalist purists. Or has private meetings with the good old boys of Wall Street to ensure that his "reforms" will contain loopholes a plenty. That same Obama Administration that supposedly was drifting so far to the left, that he just couldn't help himself when he appointed his Wall Street star studded economic team. Yes, he had veered far to the left when he started jailing whistle blowers that threatened the right wing unconstitutional surveillance program against Americans. Yes, Obama had strayed off into the hinterlands of the extreme left, when the Nobel Prize winning Obama expanded drone attacks on wedding parties, maintained the torture flights to secret locations, blocked any further investigation of torture during the Bush Administration, went to court to defend his right, by God, to kill any American by execution that he damn well pleases, demanded the ability to track everyone's location via satellite cell phone data, demands from Congress a codification of permanent detention without trial at his whim otherwise he'll just issue an Executive order. The examples go on, and on, and on, and on.

Oh, and that hippie Obama who through his DHS and TSA, instituted the most egregious assault on traveling Americans. Offering them, either the potential cancer causing naked photo screening with You Tube enhanced posting capabilities, or a sexual assault pat down.

I wish he were just a tiny bit more Socialist.

The MSM – with their framing and spinning, or pure propaganda services – has become almost entirely subservient to these money worshiping corporate gangsters.

The new Center is the old far Right.

big obama-brother. 1984. period.

from the end of conrad's "heart of darkness": "the horror! the horror!"