MANDATORY READING - Laurell K Hamilton - "My Two Cents"

"I voted for Barack Obama twice. The first time because I believed that he would be a positive change in leadership. The second time because the Republicans had not only no one I wanted to vote for, but I was actively afraid of what they might do in office, so I voted for Obama as the lesser evil. I’d wanted to vote for Gary Johnson the Libertarian candidate, but let all the talk of throwing away my vote scare me into not voting my conscience, but my fears. I vowed to follow my beliefs in politics and never let my fears rule me again, because unlike the majority of my friends that voted for Obama a second time I wasn’t happy with my choice. I’ll give you one example of why.

One of the main reasons I voted for Obama the first time was his promise to close Guantanamo Bay[i]. Gitmo maybe absolutely necessary for safety and even survival, but it is still morally wrong. I believe that imprisoning a human being without legal representation starts us down a slippery slope towards the same type of tyranny that we fought a revolution against. But Obama didn’t close Gitmo, even though he had both congress and the house as democratic majority for the first two years of his presidency. I believe that he was shown top secret information that convinced him he could not close Gitmo without endangering too much, or too many. Whatever the reason something made him back off on it, but just last week he contacted a now Republican majority and asked that Gitmo be closed, after he was only hours away from no longer being president. He knew the answer would be, no. He had to know they would not cooperate with him. Obama is too intelligent a man to not understand that the answer would be negative. So, why did he do it? Because now he can say, I tried to close to Gitmo, but the big bad Republicans wouldn’t let me[ii]. Now, instead of it being his fault that he didn’t keep his promise its someone else’s fault. It was a good political move, but morally questionable. Its a way of avoiding responsibility for something he gave his word on, and that it is a pattern of behavior for him to place blame for any failures on others. He takes responsibility only for his victories, but never for his losses. Or so it seemed to me."

Seriously, click the above to RTWT and be sure to read the comments.