Sometimes I hate it when I'm right

Back in February, on the day of the Maryland Democratic Primary, I wrote this:

Watching the coverage makes me anxious. While Clinton's shown shaking hands with workers at the GM transmission plant, Obama's got crowds of young people waving signs and chanting. As Morra Aarons wites over at BlogHer:

Being a Hillary supporter is like being the person in the dorm who yells at her partying neighbors to shut up, because she's studying for a final exam. You know you have a good reason, but you’re a little annoyed at yourself for being such a pill.

I feel like a party pooper because I'm not shouting "Si, se puede!" But Senator Obama, se puede? Could I have some more details on how se puede?

At the time, many of my Obama supportin' friends (and I do have some diehards), thought I was being a stick in the mud by continually asking for more detail from Obama, and because I said my biggest concern about Obama was that we just don't know much about him -- not enough to know what he will do once in office.

And this week, Barack Obama has been very busy proving me right, crassly moving to the center on 3 important issues: gun control, death penalty, and FISA. Where is the "new" kind of politics? Where is the "Washington outsider"? Where is the man who spoke before thousands of adoring followers in Iowa and said:

Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope. For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path.

It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.

I thought that was too good to be true. I thought the Obama supporters were being naive to believe him when he said he would stand up and "fight for it." Now it turns out he's just another politician running for office, saying whatever he has to in order to get elected.

Crap. Sometimes I really hate it when I'm right.

Joel Stein of the LA Times received much grief for this characterization of Obama:

What the Cult of Obama doesn't realize is that he's a politician. Not a brave one taking risky positions like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, but a mainstream one. He has not been firing up the Senate with stirring Cross-of-Gold-type speeches to end the war. He's a politician so soft and safe, Oprah likes him. There's talk about his charisma and good looks, but I know a nerd when I see one. The dude is Urkel with a better tailor.

So. What's next, Mr Mainstream Senator Obama?

Coming soon to a home near you: Guns

Guns. I've never shot one. I don't understand the appeal of holding one, having one, shooting one. All I know is they are destroying lives throughout America. In the past 2 weeks I have read about the shootings of a young gay teen in California, an entire family in Maryland shot by their 15-year old son while they slept, and 21 shot with 6 dead in a classroom at Northern Illinois University.

I know there are other stories, too. Lives are ended daily in inner cities across this country, from Baltimore to Detroit to L.A. You may wonder where these guns are coming from, and the sad news is that guns are extremely easy to buy in America. Disturbingly so. From the AP:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The online gun dealer who sold a weapon to the Virginia Tech shooter said it was an unnerving coincidence that he also sold handgun accessories to the man who killed five students at Northern Illinois University.

Another website run by Thompson's company, www.thegunstore.com, also sold a Walther .22-caliber handgun to Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in April on the Virginia Tech campus before killing himself.

"I'm still blown away by the coincidences," Thompson said Friday. "I'm shaking. I can't believe somebody would order from us again and do this."

Coincidences? Is he kidding? As long as guns are available like this, we will continue to see these "coincidences" again and again. I don't want to hear any more citizens or especially politicians twisting the Second Amendment for their own purposes. The right to bear arms was written into the Constitution so that a young nation could have a "well regulated militia" for protection and security of the nation — not so that you could go target shooting with a Glock 9 mm handgun.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is working to demand stronger gun laws. We have got to get together on this as a nation before our youngsters feel the only way to to solve their problems is with a gun.