Obama's campaign made the NBC national news tonight and not in a good or what I think was accurate way. Not that NBC news was the only national outlet to cover today an announcement of some sort by Obama or his campaign that they were no longer going to discourage supporters from investing in some
"SuperPAC" that is going to support him in the election.

NBC made it sound like the Obama campaign was doing all of this and was fully behind it. They called it a "flip-flop" which no doubt it is. But, the fact is that Obama and his campaign can't have anything to do with this superpac - that would be a violation of campaign financing laws. And, while Obama has tried at least a little (and granted, a lot of this was slight of hand) to distance himself from PACs, he hasn't been afraid to raise as much money as he can in support of his elections.

But NBC seemed to be reporting that Obama had rejected "SuperPACs" when he ran in 2008, and now was embracing them - the flip - flop. But that is impossible. The SuperPACs have only been able to operate in the last year or so since the Supreme Court ruled that they could accept all the money that they can raise without limit, and that the donors didn't have to be identified.

The republican candidates have already shown that they can muster many many tens of millions of dollars from individual super wealthy individuals who want to use their money to influence the politics (usually to protect their own interests). How could Obama have a chance if he is deluged with all kinds of sleazy campaign ads by these superrich superpacs? The fact is that without the resources to respond to that kind of ad onslaught across our entire country, a candidate would be a severe disadvantage.

So I'm sure that while we all should recognize that the system is broken and way too much under the influence of the wealth of a very small minority of our population, if the rules are that you can raise and spend as much as you can, then all involved are going to play by those rules.

The problem is that the public is influenced by the repeated political ads, whether we want to be or not. What the public needs to do is to make a point to reject all that mean spirited, big money advertising and vote against those candidates that are doing the most of that.