would ever, ever, ever enter my mind.
And I hesitate to post it here on DU because I know it will attract flames and I really don't want to do that. I'm hoping the mods and admins of DU know me well enough not to label me a troll or a troublemaker or a PUMA or anything like that. I'm just a serious observer of this whole horrible mess and have been since I first signed onto DU back in the summer of 2001 -- yes, before that infamous September morning.
"How can this be the same man. . . " you ask, and I'm sure you're not the only one who has asked it. "Could it all have been a clever act?"
What's the next step from that? What's the next horrible step from "clever act"? "Could it all have been a lie?"
I don't want to give the freepers and the trolls any additional ammunition, but in the interest of honesty I guess I have to put this out there. And if I get tombstoned for it, well, that's the way it goes.
Therefore ---
We knew, as well as anyone could "know" without hard evidence, that Obama's predecessors were consummate liars. They lied about the Iraqi links to 9/11, they lied about the WMDs, they lied about Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson and Niger and the yellowcake, they lied their argyle socks off about just about everything. "Bush Lied, People Died" became one of our mantras.
Has it reached the point where we have to contemplate even the possiblity that "Obama Lied, the whole Gulf Coast died"?
So Bush and McCain partied while New Orleans drowned. How much different is that from Obama and Calderón partying while Grand Isle and Plaquemines Parish suffocate in crude oil?
http://www.examiner.com/x-21743-New-Orleans-Progressive-Examiner~y2010m5d22-Plaquemines-Parish-President-Billy-Nungesser-declares-the-oilpolluted-marshes-a-dead-zone"Ever since the BP oil rig the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank over a month ago, gushing at best guess a minimum of 700,000 gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, local residents of the coast have harbored the fear that Louisiana's once pristine coastal eco-system, - home of some of Louisiana's most sacred wildlife - will eventually turn into an oil-polluted graveyard. To the dismay of everyone, that fear has now turned into reality.
"...In a part of Plaquemines Parish in an estuary called Pass a Loutre, reeds in the marshlands that were normally green with life, are now brown and dead, saturated with oil...""Sacred wildlife" is not a phrase used in everyday conversation, but I think it speaks to an almost-forgotten connection between our lives and the life of the planet. A connection relegated with some disparagement to native Americans, New Agers, and ancient goddess worshipers who hadn't seen the light of modern Jesus. We are about to be destroyed, not by the sword or by lightning, but by the consequences of our ignoring the rules of living in harmony with our world.
What Obama seemed to promise in all those ringing speeches was a return to something resembling that harmony. A retreat from war. A hand outstretched in peace. A more equitable economy.
Was it a lie? Was it all a deliberate untruth?
My French is rusty and it wasn't ever very good to begin with, but when I saw the name "Pass a Loutre" there was an instinctive "translation," if you will to "Pass to the Other Side." (Pass á l'outre.) Maybe my translation is completely wrong and someone will correct me and embarrass the hell out of me, but there you have it.
Obama has disappointed me many times since November 2008, and I've not been shy about voicing my "concerns." But I've held back on this issue because I just did not want to believe it was as bad as I thought it was.
I listened to the narrator of the "Booming 101" video as she told of her broken faith in Obama, and I heard her voice break. The truth is that 11 people have already died. Not as many as on 9/11. Not as many as in Iraq or Afghanistan. But if -- IF -- the promises were made with no sincere intent to keep them, weren't they ultimately lies?
Tansy Gold