Obama SOS

So the news organizations are gushing about the surge for Obama. Here is the good news:

1) Almost twice as many Democrats as Republifascists voted in Iowa caucuses, so it looks like the Democrats will stomp the Republicans in this years elections.

2) Obama got a whopping 38% of the caucus vote, stomping Edwards with his measly 30% and Clinton with her 29%.

Now for a bit of reality.

I) We really should not get all worked up about what a nonrepresentative sample of 0.05% of the national electorate thinks.
II) Mitt Romney could have gotten more votes at less cost by giving people 20 dollar bills (or maybe even 50s) if they promised to vote for him.
III) I suspect that Iowa's impact will be more to hurt Hillary than to help Obama.

My interpretation of the high turnout is that voters are tired of SOS (same old shit.) Well, duh. Why did McCain do so well in 2000? Obama is intelligent enough to use this and yap about change. The only question is how long it will take voters to figure out that Obama IS the same old shit. They may not care, in the same way that if you have been puking sick for seven years looking at smirkjob's face, you just want to stop retching. And maybe I am wrong, and Obama is being very shrewd and devious, faking looking like the same old shit to get the establishment support that is need to avoid the pattern in U.S. politics, that anyone who would carry through on promises for real change will get stomped down by his or her party before the voters get a chance to choose them. I doubt that Obama is the real deal.

Kerry's question, 'How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?' may have fooled people into thinking he was antiwar in 2004. Sorry. Obama has been very careful to avoid voting for the war since he declared his candidacy, but he did vote against the Troop Redeployment Amendment in 2006. In his explanation of his vote, Obama said

But having visited Iraq, I am also acutely aware that a precipitous withdrawal of our troops, driven by congressional edict rather than the realities on the ground, will not undo the mistakes made by this administration. It could compound them.

It could compound them by plunging Iraq into an even deeper and, perhaps, irreparable crisis.

We must exit Iraq, but not in a way that leaves behind a security vacuum filled with terrorism, chaos, ethnic cleansing and genocide that could engulf large swaths of the Middle East and endanger America. We have both moral and national security reasons to manage our exit in a responsible way.

If Obama can point to his 2002 speech, the 2006 speech from which the preceding is taken certainly seems relevant. Even his 2002 speech raises doubt about his anti-war commitment, as he said "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars."

Will somebody please ask Obama what was moral or responsible about voting against this amendment, resulting in an Iraq that in 2007 saw unprecedented levels of terrorism, chaos, ethnic cleansing, and genocide? Will some please ask him why he was engaged in groundless fearmongering in 2006, and whether he will return to it in 2009?