So now we know what Barack Obama really meant when he promised us change we can believe in. Believe it or not, he meant “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.

First, there was the whole surrealistic plot line of The Stimulus Bill’s Progress. Matt has put it pretty well already. After the House produced version 1.0, the changes that Obama presided over and cheered were: “Decrease spending on the social safety net, cut taxes a little for the middle and a lot for the wealthy.” Not exactly very different from how Bushworld functioned.

But there’s also one crucial element of version 1.0 itself. I’ve lost track of the number of times in the last two weeks I’ve read complaints about how Obama put in $300 billion worth of tax cuts into the bill only to attract Republican support (and then failed to attract one single vote; the three putative votes in the Senate were bought with the changes Matt decried).

Now here’s the thing. Everyone simply assumes that the tax cuts were inserted to attract Republican votes. But there’s really no evidence of that, is there? None whatsoever. We assume they were inserted for that reason, because we assume that no one on the Democratic side of things believes they have any place in a stimulus bill. Nobody, including Obama.

However, that’s just one big assumption. If we were to approach this scientifically, we would be unable to reject the hypothesis that the $300 billion worth of tax cuts were stuck in there because Obama really wanted them in the bill, in and of himself, as it were, without any reference to Republicans. Just Obama being Obama, bringing us the “the more things stay the same” flavor of change.

And, second, today we learn that when it comes to The War Against Terror (TWAT, for short), dismantling Bushworld may be just a slogan, sundry executive orders that cheered liberals notwithstanding. Obama served up another generous helping of “the more things stay the same”:

The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.

The case involves five men who claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition — including current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two now free. They sued a San Jose Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured.

A year ago the case was thrown out on the basis of national security, but today the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard the appeal, brought by the ACLU.

A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.

In TWAT, such is the Obama administration’s new vision, going backward. Long live the state secrets privilege!

In fact: “Bushworld is dead! Long live Bushworld!”