Is Lying Required in Politics? or Et tu Obamay?

WARNING: This has nothing whatsoever to do with gardens, food, or chickens.

I’ve been an Obama supporter from early on.  I was impressed with his willingness to step up in his first term to oppose the war and stick to that position.  I was impressed when he started actually making nuanced statements about race relations and patriotism.  I was generally impressed with his ability to inspire people to re-engage in politics.

And then there was the public finance thing.  He *supports* public finance.  In theory.  But there’s this big, steamy pile of money… smells so good… mmm… sweet delicious money…

Fine, practically speaking, it gives him a bigger pile to fight with, and there’s nothing illegal about it.  OK, fine.  He said he supported public finance and then just changed his mind– the first candidate since Watergate to do so.  Not exactly the definition of “support” that I imagined, but… no one’s getting hurt.  We’ll clean it up later.

Then we get his vote for retroactive immunity for the telecoms for aiding Bush in his illegal wiretapping program.  Why would he vote for a law that provides immunity for companies?  It would have passed if he’d voted against it.  I mean, violating our constitutional rights… is bad, right?  Someone should be punished for that, right?  No?  Is it just me again?  The Democrats have the majority in Congress, no?  Why does Bush get everything he wants then?

Well, Senator Obama sent me a nice letter explaining that he’d already voted against it three times.  It’s like, in Minnesota, when someone offers you cake or whatever… you have to say ‘no’ three times.  After that, your obligation ends, and you can chow down with a clear conscience.  He also mentioned “grave threats,” “track down terrorists,” “legitimate threats,” and his need to “protect the lives” of the American people.  That all sounds so familiar to me.  Where have I heard that… hmm… hordes of crazed terrorists are calling each other right now to plan an overthrow.  I’m sure we’ll catch them talking about it on one of the 168 million phone lines in the US.

Most recently, I got this from the Obama campaign (asking me for MORE money, which you might have guessed, they aren’t getting):

“Unfortunately, when it comes to collecting giant checks from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, McCain and the RNC do have a lot to brag about.”

But factcheck.org has this to say:

“To say that either the McCain campaign or the RNC are “fueled” by money from lobbyists and PACs is an overstatement, to say the least. Such funds make up less than 1.7 percent of McCain’s presidential campaign receipts and 1.1 percent of the RNC’s income.”

Did I fall for a marketing campaign? Or was that Obama, and now we’re looking at campaign consultants? Did he actually say he wanted to help pay back Hillary’s debts?! Did someone force her to loan her campaign money when everyone knew she was going to lose? What the hell? Isn’t that HER problem?

I think that a lot of people supported Obama and helped him set all-time fundraising records specifically because he wasn’t a liar.  He didn’t pull Hillary’s “well, I never thought Bush would ACTUALLY go to war” routine after voting to give him the ability to do so.

I knew, without a doubt, he’d go to war, and I’m a schmuck.  Now, we’ve lost 4,000 American soldiers, uncounted Iraqi innocents, and a TRILLION dollars, and still Congress does nothing except vote for immunity for corporations complicit in this whole mess. What do you have to do to get in trouble? Something bad?

I will vote for Obama.  I really have no other choice.  I’d vote for a sack of old shoes before I’d vote for a Republican.  I’m just really disappointed that, when the rubber hit the road, Obama began alienating his core with this stuff in the interest of moving toward the fictional “center” that Fox likes to talk about, and we’re not even really at general election season yet.

OK, I promise, next time I talk about chickens or something.