Skip to main content

Four Dimensional Chess

There's an ongoing debate among both people who voted for Obama and people who loathe Obama as to how cagey our president is. When Obama does something that boggles one group or the other, the question is often addressed in shorthand using the phrase "four dimensional chess:" as in, is Obama actually five steps ahead of his opponents strategically? Or is he flying by the seat of his pants?

This question has been bothering me all morning, as Obama has apparently been goaded by professional jackass Donald Trump into addressing the Birthers by providing a long form birth certificate. As I write this, Trump is live on CNN gloating about his role in the release of Obama's documentation. The fact that the initial Birther response seems to be "well why didn't he release this sooner? What is he hiding, HMMMMM?!" is both obnoxious and predictable. Will this satisfy the Birthers? Oh my good God no.



At WND, also known as Crazy Corsi's House of Clinically Insane Bullshit, the natives are already moving on to questions about Obama's school records, thesis, etc. etc. etc. - as others have pointed out, the Birther's moving goalposts (first the birth certificate, now other documents) and credulity (WND posted a fake Kenyan birth certificate, and has also given credence to lunatics claiming everything from a gay affair with Obama to "evidence" that he is the Antichrist) guarantee that there will be plenty of hot air and easy money surrounding Obama conspiracy theories.



I suppose that Obama might have something up his sleeve here (or, to stick to my original metaphor, Obama might be five moves ahead in four dimensional chess), but honestly, I don't think so. I think this whole situation just reminds me of an old saying (one that I recently heard applied to Glenn Beck, interestingly): never wrestle with a pig.

The pig just enjoys it, and you'll wind up in the mud.

UPDATE: I didn't catch it personally, but NPR is reporting that Obama referred to the Birthers as "carnival barkers." THAT is awesome, no matter how you slice it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Apparently, Liberals Are The Illuminati

posted 10/5/2012 by the Salt City Sinner Greetings, sheeple, from my stronghold high atop the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Salt City, where I type this before a massive, glowing bank of monitors that display the ongoing progress of my 23-point plan for complete social control. Whether you want to demonize me as a "liberal," or prefer the Glenn Beck update "progressive," we all know the truth, and it's time to pull the curtain aside: like all left-leaning persons, I am actually a member of the Illuminati. How else to explain how much power my side of the aisle wields in U.S. American politics? According to conservatives, liberals/the Illuminati control the media * , science * , academia in general * , public schools * , public radio * , pretty much anything "public," the courts * , and Hollywood * . Hell, we pretty much control everything except for scrappy, underdog operations like WND and Fox News, or quiet, marginalized voices like

The Garden Is Dead, Long Live The Garden

posted on 8/30/2015 by the Salt City Sinner  The last two times that I wrote about gardening, the tone was uncharacteristically less “playful whimsy” than “agonized demon howl.” This is with good reason. The cockroach-hearted fauxhemian Whole Foods crowd at Wasatch Community Gardens, you see, did a terrible thing to me and many other people – they decided that agreements are for suckers and that what the world really needs is another blighted patch of asphalt rather than a large and vibrant community garden, and so they killed my garden (and the gardens of many others) dead, dead, dead. Forgive my bitterness: there is something about loving a patch of actual soil, about nurturing life from tiny green shoots to a luxurious canopy of flowers and vegetables that brings out a protective streak in a human being, and also a ferocious loyalty. The destruction of Sugar House Community Garden did not, however, end my gardening career – heavens, no! Instead, I and a handful of

Cult Books: One Good, One Terrible

  I’ve finished writing a new novel (stay tuned for details) in which the massacre at Jonestown in November 1978 plays a pivotal role. Both to research it and because the phenomenon interests me, I’ve read more than a few books on cults and cultic ideology over the last year.