In 2004, the presidential race involved two white guys who went to the same privileged university. Some of us thought we had a choice even if it looked like a choice between bad and worst. Voters were led to believe that Bush and Kerry stood on fundamentally different platforms when in fact, they were both committed to supporting the best interests of the rich.

To me, it looked like a clear choice between vanilla and vanilla. Bob and I knew that whichever guy got to sit in the oval office, things weren’t going to change much. We voted for Ralph Nader and left the country to prevent our tax dollars from going to war.

In 2008, the voting public was led to believe that this time their choice would matter. For the first time in American history, a black man was running for president. And a well-spoken man he was, wooing liberals with promises of change and hope they could believe in. A groundswell of euphoric support ensued and Barak Obama took office.

Two years later, that change has not happened. The new administration left Guantanamo untouched and sent another 30,000 troops to Afhanistan. Under Obama’s watch, the FDA has approved genetically modified salmon, sugar beets and alfalfa. With HR 3200, the 50 million citizens without health insurance were handed to the for profit health insurance companies on a silver platter after the public option was removed. And he signed a Patriot Act extension with no reforms.

At this point in the political evolution of the United States of America, the country is run by the money makers, the CEO’s of corporations. Politicians, especially those at the top, are not much more than figureheads. It’s a two party system in which both parties support the 10% who control 80% of the wealth in this country.

Many of us thought a vote for Obama would be a vote for change. Come to find out it was really just a vote for chocolate over vanilla, breeding a whole new generation of disenfranchised voters.

“Guantánamo” was the name I chose for the 250 square foot garden I created in front of our house at Oilseed Community where we spent the first two years after moving to North Carolina in 2007. There were three underlying reasons for the choice.

The first was due to my profound disappointment in my country’s choice to incarcerate and torture human beings without due process of law. I understood that some of the inmates at the prison in Cuba were criminals, but that does not demand a rescinding of legal and human rights – concepts previously supported by the United States of America.

The second reason was  due to the name my friend Lyle chose for his garden some years back. Lyle’s garden is named “Cuba”, a name chosen by the inspiration he gained by learning about how the island nation of Cuba responded to the abrupt ending of their petroleum addiction after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Cuba reacted to the loss of its Soviet supply line by instituting land reform, and encouraging farmers and agronomists to retool Cuban agricultural production to methods that did not require petroleum inputs, for fuel, fertilizers, or pesticides. This amazing story can be learned though a documentary produced by The Community Solution  entitled “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil”

In North Carolina, if you want to take more food off your garden than the deer do, you need to fence your garden in, giving it the look of a place more suited toward the incarceration of edibles than the nurturing of them. Lyle’s garden, surrounded by it’s eight-foot high fence, provided him and his family a space to produce their own food, without the need for fossil fuel inputs. My first exposure to gardens with tall fences was at Lyles’ when he provided Camille and me a room for a couple of nights on an exploratory visit we made to the area in April 2007. Needless to say, I was captivated by the concept.

The third reason for my name selection was due to the influence of a master kumu hula, Hokulani Holt-Padilla, who I had the pleasure of working with back in 2000- 2001 while working with the Kaho’olawe Island Reserve Commission. One of the many pieces of wisdom I gained from Hoku was that place names are important. She helped me understand that place names are part of what defines the spirit of a place, and its people.

Guantánamo was the name originally bestowed upon the southeastern area of the island by its original human inhabitants, the Taino. Columbus landed at the bay in 1494, promptly changed the name to Puerto Grande, and started the systematic decimation of the indigenous population.

When I told one of my Oilseed neighbors that I was considering naming  the garden Guantánamo, their response was “Oh, don’t say that word!” For them, you see, that word represented the unjust incarceration and torture of human beings, and was something not very pleasant.

So there you have it. My little fortified garden was, from that point forward, known as Guantánamo. I wanted people (at least a few) to associate the name with a place of life, beauty, and sustenance rather than a collection of incarcerated and tortured humans. I was hopeful that our new president would stand by his campaign promise to close down the “detention camp” at Guantánamo Bay in his first few months in office. Since he didn’t, I did, with Lyle’s help. We moved the containers, with food growing in them to their new home next to my new garden, christened “The Sunken Gardens of Moncure”, since it is housed in an abandoned swimming pool.

That story will need to be told, in its own space in its own time, and will likely be titled “A Moveable Feast.”

What President Obama proposed today is nothing more than outright sustained murder for profit. Seven more years of destruction to bankrupt the common man and profit the war industry!

Out of respect for my many friends who campaigned long and hard to get someone they could believe in into office, I had remained silent. I didn’t write about the failure of our new hope to reinstate habeas corpus. I said nothing about his decision to keep Guantanamo open. I pulled my punches. I told myself to “wait and see.”

I said nothing because I shared some of their hope. Hope that someone strong and smart cared enough to start making things right again. Hope that there was a chance for a President to steer us in the right direction.

But no matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. And our government is run by the military industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, the health care industry, the banking and real estate industries and Wall Street.

Now I have waited long enough and seen enough. My lips are unsealed. I draw the line at premeditated murder, at outright bloodshed. This I can no longer support with silence.

I will now openly say that this administration is the continuation of the Bush agenda in every way. From Clean Coal to Health Insurance for All, we are being lied to and stolen from. Once again. Still. Forever.

“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts.” Patrick Henry, 1775 – from his speech, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.

And, in fact, we just found out that AIG, a company that got a bailout, just a week after they got help went on a $400,000 junket.

So I went and found the story about the AIG Junket, but what I can’t find is the story about the working class rioting in the streets. Because there is no story. I guess they’re all too busy, wiping tables, cutting hair, dumping garbage and detailing cars in a futile effort to make their next mortgage payment.

As per usual, Kunstler was right when he noted the following Monday:

The Big Bailout of last week may be partially rescinded as it becomes obvious that it has had no effect — I believe about half the $700 billion has already been allocated, which is to say: lost.

“How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got us into this global economic crisis?” – Teresa Finch to both candidates during the Second McCain-Obama Presidential Debate