Posted on 11/01/2013 7:24:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Often in error but never in doubt, Barack Obama could walk into the Rose Garden and step on a half-dozen rakes like Foghorn Leghorn in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and the official line would be, "He meant to do that."
And the amazing thing is that so many people believe it. "Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He's smart, deft, elegant and subtle," proclaimed then-New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in 2009. It's an image of the president that his biggest fans, in and out of the press, have been terribly reluctant to relinquish -- because it confirms the faith they invested in him. Nobody every likes to admit they were suckered.
But the fiction of Obama as a man three steps ahead has taken a terrible beating if you have eyes to see it. The budget cuts under the so-called sequester are the law of the land because Obama thought he was outthinking his opponents when he gave budget-cutters budget cuts. Now he's stuck railing against his own idea. His allegedly revolutionary decision to turn his presidential campaign into a personal political organization independent from the Democratic Party has turned out to be the most expensive way ever to generate smarmy and ineffectual e-mail spam. And, if you want to believe that Obama's goal in Syria all along was to elevate Vladimir Putin and alienate all of our Middle East allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, to make Bashar al-Assad our strategic partner while he finds more politically correct ways to slaughter his own people, well, that's nice.
Or consider Obama's only clear-cut political victory since his re-election. Republican demands were a bit of a moving target, but basically the GOP wanted either an all-out repeal of Obamacare or, as a fallback, a one-year delay of the individual mandate. By the end, they would have taken even less.
But Obama wouldn't consider it. Instead, he played hardball with everything from national park closures to, temporarily at least, denying death benefits to military families. As the debt ceiling loomed, the GOP relented. Conventional wisdom says Obama won, and I basically agree with the conventional wisdom.
Or at least I did. There's something those of us scoring that bout didn't know: The president desperately, urgently and indisputably needed to delay the rollout of Obamacare.
This is not a matter open to fair-minded dispute, never mind partisan disagreement. Even the president and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius agree that the rollout of Obamacare has been a "debacle" (Sebelius' word). Revelations in the press and in congressional hearings show that the administration was warned prior to both the shutdown and the Obamacare debut that Healthcare.gov was as ready to go live as a kid's make-believe refrigerator-box submarine was ready to explore the ocean depths.
If Obama were a chess master -- or even a fairly adept checkers novice -- he would have known that when you're not ready to do something incredibly important, it's best to buy time. He could have traded a delay (Three months? Six months?) for some major budget concessions, maybe even lifting the sequester. Perhaps his base wouldn't have liked it, but he could have easily spun the compromise as a necessity given how irrational and "extreme" the GOP was being.
Publicly he'd say he was paying a ransom to "kidnappers" and "hostage takers." He'd denounce Republicans for delaying precious insurance coverage for sick kids and frail oldsters just to score partisan and ideological points.
But privately, ah privately, the master strategist would be stroking his proverbial white cat -- or, in reality, his hypoallergenic black dog -- while breathing a sigh of relief that he bought himself some time to fix his woefully mangled healthcare reform.
Obviously he wouldn't want to delay Obamacare. But that decision was out of his hands due to his administration's incompetence. The only choice before him was whether he would get the blame for the delay or if the Republicans would.
Why Obama didn't do this and why it didn't occur to him are good questions. Hubris obviously played a role, as it does in nearly everything this White House does. But the best answer is he didn't know how terrible things were over at HHS. In other words, the chess master didn't even know what pieces he had on the board, which is usually not something we associate with chess masters. It's something we associate with people who don't even know how to play the game
The insurance co s should have been in on a plan to defund it. I know that would not have been easy
We already knew Obama is no chess master, from his dealings with Putin. I’m beginning to wonder if Obama could even play tic-tac-toe
You think the Democrats are going to fight tooth and nail to keep a law that is destroying their party (and the country)?
Don't forget -- Obama lied to everyone. Not just us. This thing is hurting every person in the country - libs included. They're going to be demanding the heads of their elected reps pretty soon.
Give this thing another six months, and all the Republicans will have to do is suggest that it be repealed, and the Dems will lead the charge.
Sure. Whatever happens happens. It’ll be a weird as this whole thing has been
One thing I’m getting hold of is how democrats live lives of lying. They lie and their associates lie. They live in their jobs in lies. This is not as strange to them as we’d think
And the takers are not concerned that he lied about this so they’re not going to be a force plus, for some stupid reason, they’re allowed to vote
If doesn’t matter.
Is matters.
Reality is that the chess master, master or no, is beating all of us.
Including your daughter.
So yeah, he’s winning, we are checkmated right now, and if you can tell me how we are not checkmated, I’d sure like to know.
Nonetheless, no one stopped him, so he won.
And no one is going to stop him.
He isn’t a wannabe dictator at all.
He is a dictator pure and simple.
Tell me, who stops him from do anything at all?
“Sometimes to create, one must first destroy”. -David, “Prometheus”
Funny how life imitates art.
Yet no one can defeat him.
Smart pigeon, stupid everyone else.
Baloney. He throws around the weight and power of the office because he can --- doesn't mean he's smart, or even brave. The man is a bully, plain and simple.
Who defeated him then?
Yes, he is a bully, and until a person stands up to the bully, the bully will remain a bully.
So who was it that stood up to him?
Who was it that stopped his agenda in its tracks?
Oh yeah, I forgot.
No one.
Well, Sarah Palin for one. She's stood up to Zero in public, and pinned the tail on his donkey ass multiple times.
As a result, his administration has had to jump into gear to shift positions on issues, or back-pedal to save face. She's knocked him off his game over and over again, with nothing more than a Facebook post.
Don't forget that it was patriots like Palin, Cruz, and Lee, who put so much consistent pressure on the regime about Zerocare, that they were forced to move forward with various stages of the roll-out when they clearly weren't ready for prime time.
We're seeing those forced fumbles across the boards now.
Those people you mentioned made valiant efforts which are much appreciated, but they did not stop him at all.
They did not stop his agenda at all.
The forced fumbles you speak of are intentional.
Obamacare is designed to fail, and it is designed to destroy the medical industry, and it is designed to enslave us, and it is designed as a stepping stone to single payer socialized medicine, and it is succeeding on all fronts.
You are saying he is messing up, but your eye is on the wrong goal.
The goal is destruction.
He is the man who is changing your life and my life in significant and dangerous ways right now.
Right now.
Until someone actually STOPS him or his agenda, then yes, he is indeed the chess master, and we are indeed in checkmate.
“Chess master”? The African communist piece of sh** still can’t figure out why he always loses at tic-tac-toe.
You seem determined to be mentally and spiritually squashed by Obama. To that degree, you’ve accepted him as your master. You don’t believe that he can be stopped, ergo, there’s nothing you can do but submit, and suffer whatever horrors he chooses to visit upon you.
You have my condolences, friend. I hope it gets better for you in the years to come.
No.
You really could not be more mistaken if you tried.
What I am determined to do is assess my enemy accurately, because an accurate assessment is the only point from which to start an effective counter response.
To sit there and call my enemy stupid and ineffective while he is in the middle of changing my life to how he wants it is something only a fool would do.
Stop being a fool, or you will remain in checkmate.
This enemy is far craftier and more resourceful than you have any idea of.
He beat you at health care tic tac toe though, didn’t he?
He is making you into a slave right now, and all you can do is make jokes about him on the internet.
I bet if he was in your face you’d flip him the bird too, which is generally the response of someone who has no other effective response.
??
Okay. Whatever you say, jerkoff.
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