Obama to opt out of public financing. Oh and that whole NAFTA deal that was destroying the American way of life. Turns out it really isn't so bad.

Fox News is reporting that Barack Obama will opt out of public financing for his Presidential campaign. This despite promising in 2007 to accept public financing and return any private donations raised during the general campaign period:

On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. McCain said that he would take up Mr. Obama on a proposal for an accord between the two major party nominees to rely just on public financing for the general election.

Such a pact would eliminate any financial edge one candidate might have and limit each campaign to $85 million for the general election. The two candidates would have to return any private donations that they had raised for that period.

Mr. Obama laid out his proposal last month to the Federal Election Commission, seeking an opinion on its legality. The commissioners formally approved it on Thursday.

The manager of Mr. McCain's campaign, Terry Nelson, said he welcomed the decision.

source: NY Times via barackobama.com

This is despite promising multiple times to accept public financing if he became the Democrat nominee as pointed out by Patterico.

Apparently one excuse that is being floated for this reversal is that Obama's donors constitute a parallel public financing system.

Huh???

Of course it's a parallel system you retards it's called private donations!

Here is the announcement

Is this what Stephen Cobert means by truthiness?

And on the truthiness front...

Remember a couple of months ago, the kerfluffle about Obama's position on NAFTA? In his speeches he was referring to it as the devil incarnate while one of his advisers - Well not really an adviser. More like some guy who had a PhD in Economics, worked for the campaign, had been referred to as a main economic adviser, but was really just some guy that Obama ocassionally said hello too - was calling the Canadians and telling them it was all just campaign rhetoric, "don't worry about it". The Obama campaign strongly denied the contact, then when a memo was produced about the meeting they claimed it was a misunderstanding, and the campaign denied the contact was authorized. Eventually the guy Obama ocassionally said hello too resigned from the campaign he didn't really work for to begin with. (At least as I recall he did)

Well in Fortune magazine this week, guess what - Turns out that NAFTA really isn't that bad after all:

"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.

h/t Instapundit

Wow! I sure feel the love don't you?