Aw, come on. Don't be hatin'.

My point is pretty simple, really.

Palin has been skewered for accepting money on behalf of her state for a project she didn't initiate personally, but fell into and tried to make the best use of. Some she ended up redirecting, some she didn't. Sounds like she was trying to maximize the benefit of what was received from the feds for the benefit of the state of Alaska.... which in case anyone hadn't checked lately, was pretty much a core function of her governor's duties.

Obama was on the *other* end of this equation in that he was the congressman (at the state level, so the dollars are going to be smaller) who was pushing and pushing his colleagues to *give* money to a project, and he ultimately got them talked into it.

And they gave it.

And they might as well have had a bonfire with that cash because it looks like next to none of it was spent on a garden at all. His buddies who were associated with the project paid themselves for their time *thinking* about it, apparently, and then there was none left to build a garden and so now they have a piddly few thousand dollars worth of infrastructure for a garden that will never be.

I realize there is a big difference in the number of zeros associated with the project, but someone who is true to their core will behave similarly regardless of the magnitude of the money. I got the feeling that when Palin was being maligned it was something of a character issue.... that she was a waster of money who didn't have the best interests of the taxpayers at heart.

With Obama and the Garden to Nowhere... he was operating on a much smaller scale at the time of that project, and that's how he treated it. He fought for something that was apparently ill-conceived and had no back-up plan in case the rest of the money didn't go through. At least with Palin, she asked that the money she was given be redirected to another worthy project. Obama was content to just let his friends get their 'pay' and for no garden to ever appear.

Ask someone who lives in the south side of Chicago if that was the best use of $120K that was allocated to their neighborhood. I'll bet to the people living there $120K sounds like a good chunk of change.