Change has not come...

Earlier this week, I decided at the last minute to vote for Barack Obama. Up until then I was going to vote for a third party candidate as McCain was surely out of the question - a maniac who was on a warpath with Russia is not someone who I'm keen on putting in the White House. His ding-dong choice for a running mate also sealed the deal.

The world seemed to think that Obama was going to lead to change, and so I voted for him.

I erred.

So far, I have learned that he is back tracking on many of his campaign pledges and taken several moves that have shocked and pissed me off completely.

1. He appoints as his Chief of Staff a man who served in a Foreign Military, the Israeli Military. This set me over the edge, the Iraq war was pushed for by the Israeli lobby in the US, Israel provided some of the bogus intelligence that led to the war. Rahm Emmanuel, furthermore, voted for the Iraq War resolution that Barack Obama voted against - the very one he made a cornerstone of his campaign.
2. He's going back on his pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq. What's the point of a campaign pledge if you don't make it happen?
3. He indicates that he wants to push yet another "Economic Stimulus" package. As if it isn't evident enough how the first economic stimulus ended up being a dismal failure, he now wants to spend more money in the futile belief that were going to someone jumpstart the economy. The economy is on its way back, you just have to leave it alone - prices are correcting, the cost of living has gone down - pretty soon things will reach bottom and we'll be headed back up. No government intervention is necessary.
4. The same faces of the past are coming back. His expected appointees are all former administration officials. Where's the change if the same people are going to be in charge?
5. He's already taken a hard-line stance on Iran, parrotting a popular line from the Bush Administration. Where's the diplomacy he talked about? Lord knows this was one of the few reasons I voted for him.

This was the reason why I supported Ron Paul - dimes to donuts you'd expect that man to implement what he believed in. Everyone else was pandering.