Yeah, I'm from Illinois. I voted Barack in as a Senator in the hope he meant what he was saying. You know what he has done for my State and country as a Senator? He hasn't done shit! Not a single campaign promise met, not a single value upheld. He gives these lofty speeches about this coming change, and how he's a Washington outsider ready to take on the system and all this fairy tale wonderful shit.

When he ran for Senate, I made the mistake of putting my hope in him...of believing in his ability to effect some amount of change. It was a wasted vote.

Take it from one of Obama's fellow Illini: If you want to see the 'Change' you can put your faith into, check out his voting records as my Senator. Check out his political connections in Chicago and Springfield. He's another tried and true Washington puppet ready and willing to do whatever the highest bidder says.

While I'm certainly not a Republican, I am voting for McCain on one reason: To slow the machine down. Less gets done when a Red Pres is teamed with a Blue Con. With the machine as it is, the slower it works the better: Letting the gears of corruption turn with speed would be national suicide if we elect another political tool like Obama. Pretty words don't mean shit, they never have.

Look at the record of Obama's actions if you want to see the real Obama: there's nothing worth believing in...there's no change to hope for.

This is how politics works in America. To act as if the problem is Obama is just as naive as claiming Obama is the solution. Obama is a pawn in a game controlled by outside forces.

The whole is defined as the sum of its parts.

Obama is in the problem, just not the whole problem. To shift that reality aside is self-deception.

Yes, the real problem is a complete lack of character so pervasive in politics that it almost melts one's face to look directly at it. I voted this man to Senate believing he was different. It was just more of the same.

Looks like we found the problem....

Yes. Hopefully, my mistake and recognition of it might help others not make the same, but on an even larger scale. Am I to be condemned for a past choice though I have every intent of amending it?

I had yet to learn fully what 'actions speak louder than words' entailed. I had yet to learn of how deep the attempt to deceive me ran in politics. I was fresh of voting age, still enthralled by self-servitude, still willing to believe in any words that caught my attention. I too was part of the problem. To think that the ignorance I bathed in cannot be overcome is to condemn the every individual; we all start in ignorance. All it takes to overcome it is an honest examination of one's choices and their effects.

There is only one way to convince someone to vote who understands how politics works and isn't some Obama/McCain fiend/sheep

You have to look at things in the grand scheme. You can't vote for a major party leader expecting immediate change, you have to approach it finding the best possible candidate of the group and support them in hopes that they will set some sort of standard in which other candidates will build off until we get to the point where change will actually occur.

However, in doing so you sacrifice, in my opinion, personal integrity by voting for someone who is just a figure head full of promises waiting to be broken.

Or you can just accept the fact that our country and species is pretty much fucked and has failed to unlock our potential...However, a potential solution is better than nothing so you might as well vote for the best possible candidate.

Just don't complain about individuals and realize the problem is much much more complex.

That's kind of what I'm getting at, but I still hold that the problem as a whole cannot exist without the individual players that continually contribute to the problem. Of this category, Obama proceeds.

Humanity as a whole isn't fucked unless humanity as a group of individuals contributes more to its own demise than to its survival and enlightenment. It is the contribution of the individual that can be effected, and only through a spread of positive changes on the individual level does any change occur on the unified level. To elect the same party to President as runs the Congress while the machine is still operating on the basis of corruption and power consolidation is insane. Sure, you can dupe yourself into thinking Obama's not a puppet, that he really will bring change to the national political machine, and thus justify the decision to put him into power...but I'm hear trying to cry out to those who would do so, "LOOK AT HIS RECORD!"

Oiling the gears of corruption is the work of madmen! Fuck that! I'm trying to throw a wrench in 'em!

Keep the corrupt arguing and getting as little done as possible while in the meantime attempting to effect change on the individual level so that the machinery itself can be replaced. From the level of city, we need non-party folks running for office without the lust for power. A desire to serve the people as individuals and as a whole is essential to the proper use of the power given elected officials.

You can think we're already doomed to self destruction if you want, but by my own life experience I know that it's not too late until you're under the dirt.

What did he do so awful?

A freshman state senator can't really do much of anything.

__________________
"Seek first compassion and enlightenment; everything else will fall into place. Strive to live in the present moment and take therefore no thought for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." -- Matthew 7:33-34

That is kind of what I was thinking.