President-elect Barack Obama's tilt to the right became obvious immediately after his historic victory, with the appointment of Rahm Israel Emanuel, a pro-Israel hardliner, as chief of staff. Our December Exit Poll was: "Barack Obama: ruling class pawn or avatar of freedom?" We received the following responses:

Media accounts are generally not recalling the similar incidents earlier this year. Why is nobody seeing patterns here? From Network World, Dec. 22:

Undersea robot searches for severed cables
A robot submarine was scouring the seabed 200 meters under the Mediterranean Sea on Monday trying to locate the ends of undersea cables that were cut on Friday, disrupting voice and Internet traffic.

We recently noted that the ACLU is calling for President-elect Barack Obama to close Guantánamo Bay prison camp his first day in office. Now the Pentagon says it is working on a plan to close the camp—but, based on a new Obama interview in Time magazine, the time frame being posed for the closure is two years. From Reuters, Dec. 18:

A new report by the US Army War College's Strategic Institute warns of massive domestic unrest in the wake of converging crises that it terms a "strategic shock," and discusses the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used at home. "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security," reads the Nov. 8 report, "Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development" by Nathan P. Freier of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

For the first time, the US has released Guanánamo Bay detainees in response to a court order, sending three Algerian-born prisoners to their adopted homeland of Bosnia Dec. 16. The three are among five Algerians ordered released last month by a federal judge who ruled that the Bush administration had failed to support its claim that they planned to travel to Afghanistan to fight US forces in 2001.

We wish we were joking. From CNN, Dec. 2:

Behavioral screening—the future of airport security?
TEL AVIV — Keep your shoes and belts on: Waiting in long airport security lines to pass through metal detectors may soon be a thing of the past. Security experts say focus is shifting from analyzing the content of carry-ons to analyzing the content of passengers' intentions and emotions.

President-elect Barack Obama's reported pick for Drug Czar, Minnesota's Republican Rep. Jim Ramstad, is called out by Maia Szalavitz on Huffington Post Dec. 9 under the lurid title "Obama Drug Czar Pick Tied to Abusive Christian Rehab Linked to Contributor Charged with $3.5 Billion Fraud":

Relatives of 9-11 victims were brought to Guantánamo Bay to witness as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four co-defendants appeared before a US military tribunal. The five men told a military judge they intend to confess in full—an evident challenge to the government to put them to death. (NYT, AFP, Dec. 9) A Dec. 9 New York Times piece, "Relatives of 9/11 Victims Add a Passionate Layer to Guantánamo Debate," explicitly states that the survivors are being played in a political strategy over the prison camp's future under President Barack Obama:

In the days before the presidential elections, the US launched an air-strike on a village in Syria. Since then, the US has been bombing Pakistan every few days, with the media paying very little note. Our November Exit Poll was: "Will the Bush administration instrument a new global crisis in the time remaining to it?" We received the following responses:

On the heels of talk about forming an an anti-Obama "underground," the right-wing talk radio set is now broaching actual secession from the union. The liberal blog Think Progress Nov. 25 posted an audio link from a recent broadcast by shock-jock Glenn Beck. Here's the offending quote: