Now, I don't live in anything the used to be called a red state, and unless hell freezes over (which apparently wouldn't surprise most climatologists these days) I don't live in a swing state either.
But ...
I'm not voting for Barack Obama. Period. And here's why:
GUNS!
It is inconceivable that a supposedly progressive president of the United States, from Chicago, a city that has a history with gun violence, did not use this past week to regulate guns.
What happened this week that was different? Three things:
First, just when American's (who can't pay attention to any one subject past three days, including events whose duration is longer than three days, like the Olympics) attention span was turning its collective back on the events of Aurora, CO, some perfectly sad individual shot-up a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin and kills people in the act of worshiping God. That he was trained to do this in the army or that he was on FBI watch lists related to hate groups in his area of the country only begs the question of how this was even possible.
The second thing that happened this week, (supposedly a friend of the POTUS's) Gabby Giffords' shooter plead guilty to his perfectly horrendous crime, committed in a state whose gun-holding laws are (not to get to legalese for this site) WHACK! This just adds to the frustration of a missed opportunity.
And last but not least were the lingering horrors of the aforementioned shooting in Colorado - several miles from, guess what?, yeah, Columbine - where a lunatic's only misstep in his plan to kill hundreds (HUNDREDS!) of people sitting down to enjoy the cheap thrills of a summer blockbuster was that he couldn't actually operate all the complicated weaponry he was allowed to purchase without questions be asked or (God-forbid) authorities being alerted.
Do you know what I say to a leader who does not - either because its an election year or because he simply doesn't see a dangerous pattern emerging here - seize on this past week to fight for new gun regulations?
I say I'm not voting for you. Period.
(Plus there's his inability prosecute mortgage fraud that currently rests on the backs of the middle class, his hiring of Summers and Geithner during the (ongoing) financial crisis, the fact that Guantanamo is still in operation, the military uses of torture,rendition, drone strikes, and on and on and on. DISAPPOINTED!)
5:05 AM PT: NTY op-ed on the much-ridiculed idea that O should seize leadership on gun control: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...