If You Tell a Lie. . .

Everyone from George Washington to Pinocchio knows that if you tell a lie, the consequences are unpleasant, and seldom do you get through life without your secrets being discovered by somebody.  Many people choose to ignore this life truth for individual reasons; unfortunately people who are in charge of our country, our universities, our churches, and our businesses are among those who think they can manage the consequences so that they can maintain the power they have obtained.  This trend is prevalent in our political system to the point that it is a commonly accepted behavior, and candidates for office think they can't win an office if they are truthful.

In 2004 when Mr. Barack Obama gave forth with an attention-getting speech at the Democratic National Convention, I thought he did pretty well.  His books, Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope, set the country on fire because of how well they were written.  (A disclaimer:  I haven't read either of these books.)  But you know, sometimes you pick up on something intangible, something intuitive, that tells you that things are just not right.  Every time I heard Obama speak, I had that feeling.  If he were the inspirational communicator people found in his books, why did he hem and haw, stutter, and totally depend on a teleprompter when he spoke.  He did not have the words in him.

So when I saw Jack Cashill on C Span promoting his new book that de-mystified the great Obama, I knew I had to read it.  What a wild, wonderful trip it was.

Before I read the first word, I flipped to the back of the book to see if he had footnotes and references.  He did.  Unfortunately his references listed secondary sources.  But the book is, for all practical matters, a literary analysis, so using material from the works being analyzed and other analyses is fair, I think. Also consider that any records pertaining to Obama, his family and friends, his education, and his work have been scrubbed as clean as a Dutch housewife's kitchen floor.

Deconstructing Obama has two main tenets:  Obama did not actually write either of his books, and Barack Obama, Sr., is not his father.  Obama's life and work, as the public knows them, were structured to enhance his political opportunities which in the beginning consisted of aspirations to be the mayor of Chicago.  Even the most astute political analyst did not foresee the election of 2008.

To my thinking Cashill deftly proved that Dreams from my Father was written by Bill Ayers. The analysis is long and complicated, so read the book if you need the full story.  Cashill provides examples of Obama's early writing, and the difference in any writing example that is presented and the Dreams book is more than striking.  Let it suffice to say that Obama needs work on subject-verb agreement, something that most eighth graders can master.  Cashill also presents a poem that Obama wrote that is so incoherent it sounds like something those proverbial monkeys in a room full of typewriters wrote.  

As for the paternity issues, Cashill presents several possibilities in the absence of any proof.  First, he raises doubt about Barack Obama, Sr., the Kenyan, fathering Ann Dunham's child.  Cashill says the birthers are following the wrong story and overlooking the obvious reasons that records have disappeared and family and friends have been told to zip it when reporters and researchers come around.  Of course, most of the primaries in this situation are dead.  You know what they say about dead men and tales.

I'm not going re-tell all of the theories about who Obama's father is.  I will say that if you look at pictures of Barack Obama, Sr., Ann Dunham, Frank Marshall Davis, and Barack Obama, Jr., side-by-side, there are amazing revelations.  If you don't know who Frank Davis is, you'll need to do some research on your own.

And let me say that all this information that was new to me is all over the internet.  I had no idea until I read Deconstructing Obama.  I had never seen a picture of Obama's maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham.  Barack Obama, Jr., is the spitting image of his grandfather.  Who finds out these things?  Apparently thousands of bloggers and writers on the internet.

Another issue discussed in the book is the pictures of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham.  The pictures show a nude woman who is attributed to be Ann Dunham by many people.  Of course, this is denied and the pictures are reportedly of a 1950 pin-up girl named Marcy Moore (so says Snopes.com and others).  I looked at the pictures of the nude and also of Marcy Moore, and I have to believe that these are pictures of Ann Dunham based on the similarity of other pictures of Ann Dunham.  She has the notorious Dunham chin, and Marcy Moore really doesn't look that much like Ann Dunham, except that they both have dark, short hair.

Some of Cashill's theories have strong documentation.  Some of his theories do not.  All of these theories are predominant on the internet, just as much as the birther theories are.  Quite a bit of band width and time are being spent on these topics.  While our country is gurgling down the drain, we're spending time figuring out who is really the father of Barack Obama.  And Barack Obama and his handlers are spending their time denying it and perpetuating the Structured Obama.

How much better off we all would be if Obama had just told the truth.  I think we could handle it.

All the News That's Fit to Print

Things are popping in Applewood.  My neighbor to the east of our house is having some work done on his kitchen.  I know this because of the sign in the yard saying it's a "Lowe's" job and the truck in the driveway with the sign on the door advertising that they are kitchen specialists.  My neighbor at the entry of the development is getting a new mattress from Kiser's Furniture.

My news is that my peas, onions, potatoes, and lettuce were buried today, and in seven to 10 days they will be resurrected in a brand new body.  The soil is probably too wet to be planting, but I dumped three bags of Black Kow composted cow manure into my little plot anyway and carried forth.  You can grow anything, anywhere, if you put enough manure into the ground where it's planted.    

My plan was to plant my garden by the signs, but today was designated as a "most barren period".  Anyone wanting to plant root crops, according to the Farmer's Almanac, should do so on one day about the first of March and one day next week.  I think today was listed as good for killing pests, digging holes, and slaughtering.  Wonder what kind of potatoes that will produce.

I grow peas because you cannot buy (at least around here) fresh peas in the shell.  A few years ago I bought some pea seeds on a trip to Monticello, and I've saved seed from them every year since then.  I'm not sure I'll have peas this year though.  When I save the seeds, I dry the pods and then shell the seeds out of them, storing them in an envelope until the coming spring.  Last fall, either through laziness or abject distraction, I left the peas in the dried pods in a little bowl in my china cabinet.  This morning I started shelling the peas out of the pods, but I was distraught to find the pods in the bottom of the bowl were molded.  Most of the peas seemed okay, so I went ahead and planted them.  In a few weeks we'll see what kind of peas you get from moldy seeds.

The big news in Applewood today, though, is that someone is refurbishing the old apple barn down by the "big road".  A few years ago someone cleared out the brush around the barn and put a new roof on it, but today someone has not only used heavy equipment to pull the vines off the walls and roof and clear out the weediness, but they have replaced the door on the loft, cleared out all the old packing boxes, re-done the parking area, and, of all things, painted it red.  Nobody puts that much work into a building unless they have plans for it.  So the big mystery is what will take place in the old apple barn.

Senior Attention Deficit Disorder

Note to self:  select a topic for a new blog.  Possible topics are:  organizing the attic, learning to throw away items to which you're emotionally attached, was the weather prediction by the groundhog accurate, cooking, paying taxes, Winston Churchill, digging up the garden, cooking, going to Asheville, Estep family history, and cooking.

Have I lost every smidgen of my ability to focus?  I believe I have.

I am just about three months out from my last day at work.  I'm beginning to take this retirement thing seriously.  My hair stylist told me last week that most people she knows who've retired spend the first year doing all the house work they've neglected over the last 30 years.  That's not true in all situations of course.  A friend of mine who retired about five years ago immediately went on a trip to Scotland, and even today she seems to have a good time.  She supplements her income by painting "primitive" landscapes that she sells through an antique mart, and she just bought a cabin in the mountains.

I suppose I've taken the route of cleaning out all the detritus we accumulated in this house since 1991.  I haven't exactly given up on that project, but I am taking a break. Big jobs are more easily accomplished by breaking them into smaller jobs.  It takes longer, but it's an effective mental game to play on yourself.  "Today I will do this one thing.  Then I'll go to Wal-Mart."  I'm still waiting, of course, for better weather to clean windows and carpets.

Those things that I thought would make retirement worthwhile have somehow been pushed to the side.  All of the genealogy I was going to write up is sitting in a stack on the floor of our home office.  The painting I planned to finish reclines on the easel.  I'm still cleaning house.

So I've determined that I'm not exhibiting some kind of old person "nesting", but rather I'm afflicted with a syndrome called Senior Attention Deficit Disorder (SADD).  It's commonly found among new retirees overcome with all the possibilities of things to do each morning.  Instead of selecting a course of action for the day that is enjoyable and productive, SADD sufferers lose calendars and misplace cell phones as they drift from one possibility to another.  This isn't a memory problem; I don't forget to do things, but I am having trouble finishing what I start.  Just like one famous Georgia girl (and many other retirees), I can always do it tomorrow.