It's baaaack!!

Four years ago, I was on tenterhooks over the 2004 presidential election and the chance to stop George W from having a second term. I wasn't raving over John Kerry, but I certainly liked him, and he was orders of magnitude better than the alternative. So one evening during the long, long, long election season, I found myself in front of the computer drinking a bottle of wine and watching snippets of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911". (I'm sure I've told this story before). Somehow, my credit card ended up in my hand and then I was at the Kerry campaign headquarters website punching in a donation between my heaving sobs at what a wreck the war in Iraq was, and at my fears for another 4 years of the Bush administration. I learned a valuable lesson that night.

Wine, credit cards, and the internet is a combination best avoided.

I clicked "submit" on the donation page and immediately got back a "Thank you for your generous donation of $2000.00 to the Kerry campaign!"
It took a few seconds for it to compute that somehow, an extra zero had appeared in my donation. Thus ensued a stunned silence, rubbing of the eyes, disbelief, and then one of the fastest sinking feelings in the pit of my stomach that I've had to date.
To make a long story short, I was able to straighten it out with the campaign the next day, and they cheerfully removed one of the zeros, after laughing at me (not with me but at me).

I thought that was the end of that particular story.

This last weekend, I got a phone call from the Democratic candidate running for the US Congress in my local district. I mean, I got a call from the candidate himself. I thought that was surprising. We chatted for a long while, and he started telling me about his stance on the current financial crisis. He mentioned Obama's tax plan and said something to me like "You know, taxes won't be increased on families making less than a quarter million dollars a year. Now, I don't know if you're in that bracket or not - you very well may be."
(Um. OK.)
I told him I was not but that if I were, I would not waver in my support for that sort of tax increase one bit. I then told him I was an atmospheric scientist and that I was especially concerned that the current financial crisis would put the global environmental crisis down the priority list. He immediately assured me that this was the MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE in the world to him and that he'd campaigned on it for years. It was in all of his stump speeches for the last 5 or 10 years or so. (Oh, really? FWIW, I couldn't find the word mentioned on his website, though his support of alternative energy sources was quite prominent, in a vague sort of way)

Anyway, he then asked me if I would contribute $2300.00 to his campaign. I immediately burst into laughter, which I don't think was quite the response he was looking for. I recovered enough to tell him I didn't have that kind of cash sitting around and asked him for his website, which he was happy to share with me.

Today, I received a letter from him, again asking for $2300.00 for his campaign, or at least, for a smaller donation of $1000.00. What the hell?

It finally occurred to me that my erroneous extra-zero donation has returned to haunt me. It must have remained on the list of donors to the Democratic Party, and he's targeted me as a money-bags. I hope he's not counting on it.