I Love Barack Obama - There I Said It

From the day +Barack Obama first came to my attention as a potential leader of the American people, I was impressed by him, and by his intelligence. My first concern, should he manage to become POTUS, was the possibility of assassination. There is still so much racial hatred all I could think was that if he became president someone, somewhere was going to try to kill him. Thankfully this has not come to pass, and I hope that continues to be the case.

Once Obama took office I was impressed with more than his brain. I was impressed by the fact that, though he's a Christian, he did not intend to inflict his religion on others, saying that religion had no place in the White House. I was impressed that he made it clear right from the beginning of his first term in office, his family time was sacrosanct. No other president has shown such family loyalty. Either they were afraid to put their family first, or they didn't care enough to do so.

I was impressed when Obama declared there would be no more financial assistance for oil and similar industries, and that preference would be given to emerging industries in ecologically friendly energy production such as solar power. He mentioned a company that created photovoltaic roof tiles, which is something I'm more than a little bit interested in. I'm impressed that he chose to make this declaration despite the fact that it was going to paint a huge target on his back. If people didn't hate him because he was part black, the oil conglomerates were going to hate him, and they have the resources to order a very expensive hit.

I was very impressed that he finally managed to extract American troops from the mess in Iraq. After a US President that went blundering in with no thought to an exit strategy, this was indeed a very big accomplishment. Never mind the fact that the war had nothing to do with helping people in Iraq, and had everything to do with laying claim to the oil. There was a very big mess for Barack Obama to clean up.

A friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook years ago, with a sketch of George W. Bush on it saying, "I screwed over the entire world, but thanks for blaming it on the black guy." It was true, in most senses, and illustrates crowd mentality. People don't realize how long it actually takes to clean up a mess that big, or how long it takes before we sometimes see the full picture of what that mess entails. In fact, most financial experts blame the current state of the economy on deregulation of the financial industry, and that particular Act was signed by none other than Bill Clinton, who was himself an Economics graduate. So, as much as I might have hated GWB, he didn't start the ball rolling when it came to the economic crisis.

Sure, there are things Obama has done that I haven't felt were the greatest. However, I also understand that there are sacrifices that need to be made for the greater good. Unless you're incredibly naive you know that as well as I, and no matter how many movies are made that show how evil it is to hurt one person for the greater good, it's a fact of life.

Today, I discovered yet another reason to love, and be impressed by, Obama. I saw a video of him giving a press conference on the new laws that have been drafted for gun control. There are apparently 23 steps he wants taken, but the video was cut quite a bit so I only saw four. The first was complete, uniform background checks on everyone who wants to buy a gun. The second was a 10-round limit on magazines. The third was a complete ban, or restriction, on military-style assault weapons.

The video was cut here to exclude all but the last measure he wants to see taken, and the last measure was tougher penalties for those who deal weapons to criminals. The way he phrased it would lead one to think he was referring to including gun shops, as opposed to just the street dealers. It's hard to say for certain without seeing the actual proposed legislation.

As I've stated before, there isn't a single reason why a civilian would need more than ten bullets in a magazine, or the ability to fire off hundreds of rounds per minute. This is not the zombie apocalypse, and neighbourhoods are becoming war zones only because people are carrying such nasty weapons. You can say, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," all you want to, but the fact is guns that are capable of rapid-firing and hold large numbers of bullets are certainly assisting those who want to kill as many people as possible. The guns are enablers. They should be charged with aiding and abetting, but seeing as they non-sentient then it should be the manufacturers and dealers that allow assault weapons to make their way onto the street that are charged with the crime.

I'll put it this way when it comes to magazines: If one of your family members was the thirtieth person to be shot and killed from a thirty-round magazine, you'd probably think a little differently about high-capacity magazines. You might start to think a ten-round limit is probably for the best. If a killer has to take time to reload, that gives your loves ones a much better chance of getting away if they weren't part of the first round that was taken down.

Even people who use guns for sport shooting, (such as the Bushmaster used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown shooting,) do not fire off repeated rounds. They aim for accuracy and skill, no pun intended. The idea is to make a single shot count, not spray a target until it's reduced to confetti. They don't do it to "get their gun off" so to speak.

Barack Obama is an intelligent man, and he has redeemed my faith in Americans just by virtue of the fact that Americans were smart enough to vote him into office. Not just once, but twice. Now, if we could only get the idiot running Canada out of office, we Canadians would be much happier. Do you think Obama would be willing to relocate?