In another attempt to pinch-out a phrase for the times, President Obama launched his 2012 re-election bid this morning with a stirring, “It begins with us,” planted on his official site at barackobama.com.
I knew 2008 personally, and this ain’t 2008.

From CNN:

Shortly afterward, Obama sent an e-mail to supporters to say he will also file papers Monday with the Federal Election Commission.
“We’ve always known that lasting change wouldn’t come quickly or easily. It never does. But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we’ve made — and make more — we also need to begin mobilizing for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest,” Obama said in his e-mail message.

The word ‘progress‘ may be a lot like the word ‘inconceivable‘ — those who use them haven’t a real-freakin’ clue to what they actually mean.

Now don’t get me wrong.
In 2008 I figured Obama was a shitload better than that other fellow, you remember, that old dumb-ass who didn’t understand the Internets, and it was punch to see an entire country galvanized behind a guy who could, just maybe, bring awesome change to US peoples living then under the horror of George Jr.
A lot, and there was a lot, of young people were swept away and voted for Obama in droves.
My oldest daughter became highly involved — for the very first time — in the political process and she couldn’t get enough of him.
Then living in Texas, she was fired from a high-paying job because of an Obama sticker on her car.
Now, the word ‘disappointed’ doesn’t even get close to how she feels.
And there’s a mega-shitload of other young folks in the same political boat — what a let down.

Although in 2008, I was also fairly excited about Obama during the early stages of the campaign, but was stricken with great doubt upon witnessing the famous three-point basketball shot made in a gym in Kuwait during an overseas tour that July.
You can see the big whoosh here.
A total metaphysical moment for me, to be sure, but the incident marked the turning point where I was no longer blinded by the Obama glow.
Even despite great joy in the November election results, the nagging doubt remained.
And now more than two years later, the only comment about Obama is WTF.

Not only has Obama dished his original supporters, he apparently a warmonger, and been one all along.
In an opinion piece at The American Prospect, Jamelle Bouie makes this observation:

Reread his much-praised 2002 speech against the Iraq War.
It doesn’t begin with a condemnation of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or even the war itself.
It begins with this:
“Although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.” And after listing the circumstances where war was justified — in his signature cadence — he clarifies, “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war.”
Dumb wars, according to the then-state senator, were “based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

Yet in a horrible case of cruel irony, Obama fully-backs one great-dumb-ass war in Afghanistan and has placed the US in another perilous perch with the no-fly/no US boots on the ground war in Libya, which in the end might be as bad as Iraq (no, take that back, that was way-way-more-horrible).

Just take the nefarious dark-ages torture chamber at Gitmo — a place Obama promised to shut down.
From the LA Times on Sunday:

The lawyers who spent years fighting to free prisoners at Guantanamo Bay thought they had won in 2008, when the Supreme Court gave detainees a right to go to court and Barack Obama was elected president.
But things haven’t worked out as they had hoped.
Last month, President Obama reversed a campaign promise and announced plans to keep prisoners at Guantanamo indefinitely.
Congress has blocked moving any prisoners from the Cuba detention center to this country, even for a trial. And the high court’s decision in June 2008 has been rendered all but meaningless because appellate judges ruled these prisoners held without trial had no right to be released.

And to think, just two years ago all this shit was inconceivable.

(Illustration above found here via Google Images).