Public Service Announcement: You don�t need political analysts; just read the news. Single lines of news suffice at times. You are now in the post-analytic age.

Here is a one-liner from a Yahoo! News piece on the recent passage of the Snoops-R-Us bill in the Senate: �Obama ended up voting for the final bill, as did Specter.�

That one sentence tells you all you need to know about where Obama and most Democrats stand on the issue of civil liberties and what political leaders are not willing to do to protect those liberties. Now, that should be enough to make you withdraw your support from Obama�s presidency if, that is, you still have illusions about the Democrats in general, and Barak Obama in this round of Anybody-But-Bush/McCain.

�What?� says you, �and let McCain win the election?�

To that it must be said: What on earth is the difference when the Democratic presidential nominee, during the election campaign, votes in the same way as a right-wing Republican not just on any bill, but on a bill curtailing people�s civil liberties?

Of course, Obama, being a smooth political operator, made a mountain out of his molehill of an �opposition� to the bill, by supporting an amendment to the bill that would have removed the telecoms� immunity, but when the amendment failed, he simply dropped the ball on the whole thing and plainly didn�t care enough to vote No (only symbolically mind you, since its passage was assured tremendously by the rest of the Democratic corporate lackeys masquerading as people�s representatives).

This, in an election year, is highly telling, if not plain astonishing. It is customary for Democratic politicians to pull symbolically left-leaning gestures during the presidential campaign seasons, to prove this or that credential with this or that constituency that has real and therefore left-leaning needs. So, one would have expected Obama to move slightly to the left of the right end of the political spectrum, if only for just a quick photo op.

As the presumptive nominee, he could have rallied all the Democrats into a cohesive voting block to stop this further erosion of people�s civil liberties; he would have raised his political capital by millions. One would have expected fiery speeches in support of a change from the totalitarian path set by the Bush administration to a situation where people�s rights were restored, secured and hopefully expanded. Instead, this Democratic candidate has been proving his right-wing credentials one after another.

First, he made it clear he�s all for the intensification of the Afghan war; he has announced an indefinite open season on Pakistani soil and airspace; he has announced he will uphold Israel�s strategic supremacy in the Middle East (read, barbaric oppression of Palestinians, and indefinite bullying rights against Arab neighbors); now he has shown that he will go along with governmental infinite access to all households in the U.S. Obama does not defend the constitution, and he is a constitutional lawyer?

If Obama cannot even make a show or a pretence of a defense of people�s rights when he is not the president, I for one am vastly fearful of what he is capable of doing when/if he is the president!

Here is a classic, textbook case of a man simply and purely hungry for power and willing to do anything to get to it; a man who is beholden to the same exact lobbies that control the Republicans, the Congress and the Executive branch; and a man who does not shy away from curtailing, in broad daylight, people�s rights and safety from arbitrary government search and seizure.

What more proof does anybody need to conclude that Obama is just as bad and harmful for the well-being of the Americans (and others) as is McCain or Bush? Your vote for one or the other makes no difference. Voting for either is the same as throwing your voting ballot in the toilet. Political hacks that throw away people�s rights and their protections against arbitrary governance do not deserve to be elected at all.

If you want real change and you think voting can bring some change, then know this: the only difference you can make by voting is casting a protest vote. Tell the establishment they don�t represent you in a written, documented form.

Write in your own name on the ballot; better, write in your grandmother�s name. Stop handing blank checks to a government that is so plainly bent on screwing you. Stop being slaves. At least spit back in their faces. Don�t waste your vote, don�t waste the only political force you can legally exercise, and don�t waste your voice; vote for Nader, vote for McKinney, for anybody but the establishment boys.