House of Eratosthenes

Oh, my. This is strange. Starting at the beginning, Our Nation’s First Holy Emperor-President mentioned that He skeet shoots, all the time. “Have you ever fired a gun?” says the interviewer. He Who Walks On Water replies, “Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time.”

This struck some as a bit odd. There followed an awkward exchange at the White House briefing room, in which some reporters asked something like, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? And Jay Carney replied with an answer that was completely useless, with an pungent undertone of, you’re a doody-head for asking the question…which is a bit like saying today’s day-of-the-week ends with the letter Y, or water is wet.

I’ve removed the video embed because it auto-plays. It’s just Jay Carney doing that answer-a-question thing he does, which doesn’t have much to do with answering questions. You’ve seen him do it once, you’ve seen it a hundred times.

That’s why they pay him. Give out useless answers, make it clear you’d prefer the question not be asked, deliver a veiled insult. There’s a lot of that going around. We’re not fond of exchanging information in these times…and Jay Carney is really a man for our times. I’m not entirely sure what his function is, but it makes sense to somebody, so there ya go.

And then somebody — perhaps David Plouffe — had an idea. And so the White House released a photo.

…to go with Plouffe’s tweet…

Attn skeet birthers. Make our day – let the photoshop conspiracies begin! m.flickr.com/photos/whiteho…

— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) February 2, 2013

For those interested in details, Washington Post provides some…

The photo, taken by White House photographer Pete Souza, depicts a sunglasses-wearing Obama firing what appears to be a Browning Citori 725, the shotgun wedged against his left shoulder, a pillow of white smoke emerging from the barrel.

I’m finding it difficult to work up my give-a-damn about any of this. We know from President Obama’s position on gun control that He is entirely ignorant of, or doesn’t give a rat’s ass about, some fundamental truths about guns and their useful purpose for personal defense. So He fired a gun before, or He didn’t fire a gun before. Who cares? And “we do skeet shooting all the time” is a lie, or it’s not a lie…again, who cares? He lied about “your taxes aren’t going up” and “ObamaCare is not a tax,” so He’s already a liar. There’s no outstanding question on it.

If the picture is supposed to prove “we do it all the time,” I’d say, if anything, it proves the opposite. If I saw my kid getting ready to discharge a gun while holding it that way, I’d probably intervene and say, let’s work on that posture a bit first. Sure, it’s a bit amusing afterward when the big weapons go flying out of careless hands, especially if it’s caught on video. But, safety first. This shotgun-wielder does not look ready.

No more than this baseball pitcher:

Or this hole-digger:

Or this bicyclist:

Given that pattern, it’s clear that Barack Obama is not a hands-on person. He is not someone you would hire to actually get real work done. He gives speeches and makes people feel good…until they figure out He’s sold them something they wouldn’t have bought, had they been better informed…but that’s His deal. You wouldn’t want Him doing something you actually had to have done. It isn’t even a matter of failing to finish the job, you’d be truly afraid that He’d end up hurting Himself.

I don’t know why they released this picture. I think it was a mistake. But hey, their people are winning all the time, for the moment anyway, so who am I to question it.

Still, I think this was a public-relations folly. It’s the false-consensus effect; I’m sure in the back rooms packed full with Barry’s people, releasing the picture was a can’t-lose proposition. To the rest of the country, it was mock-worthy. Why did they do this, anyway? What’s the upside?

Bookworm notices something interesting here:

Obama was so upset about accusations that he lied about skeet shooting that he immediately released evidence supporting his statement. This sensitivity to his reputation for truthfulness doesn’t square with Obama’s ongoing refusal to release his original birth certificate. Wouldn’t you think that Obama would be more even intent upon proving his veracity when it comes to his constitutional bona fides than he would be about whether he shoots little flying saucers?

Likewise, Obama has never seemed interested in refuting conservative sneers when it comes to his much vaunted, but completely unproven, academic record. Obama and his friends say it’s good, but conservatives say that his spoken fund of knowledge is inconsistent with good high school and college grades. Wouldn’t you think that Obama would want to refute this conservative smear against his integrity?

Given the peculiar absence of evidence about the circumstances of Obama’s birth and his academic qualifications, especially when compared with his immediate and triumphant proof that he’s handled a gun, one might be inclined to think that Obama hasn’t defended himself in those areas because he can’t. That is, he cannot prove that his birth certificate comports with his statements about his life history (whether it shows he was illegitimate, another man’s child, or born outside of the US) nor can he prove that his academic records do not support his, and his supporter’s, claims about his intellectual acumen and accomplishments.

I know that, with Obama’s reelection, the time for harping on his birth (never mind its possible constitutional implications) and his schooling (which really is irrelevant by now) has long passed. Still, his differing responses to these different attacks on his integrity are thought-provoking, if nothing else.

I’m sure Bookworm is not going full-tilt Birther. I’m certainly not; there’s no evidence to suggest Stanley Ann Dunham was ever in Kenya, of which I know, and as Neal Boortz has pointed out several times, it is traditional for babies to be born somewhere in close physical proximity to their mothers. But the observation remains a valid one.

Barack Obama’s people are preternaturally obsessed with winning arguments. We’re now going into our fifth solid year of watching them being confronted with that old, old problem for the revolutionary, which might be stated as: “Okay, your revolution is successful and you are in charge now — start fixing everything.” They are doing much worse than simply failing to meet the challenge. They’ve shown, time and time again, they got nuthin’. With the enemy vanquished, they have to keep re-fighting the fight they’re supposed to have just gotten finished winning.

Which leads to a lot of bad decisions being made. But with the showing-the-proof thing, we get this split behavior, and I dunno maybe it’s simply reflecting the random, haphazard, unstable thinking at the top of the organizational pyramid. On this thing over here you get this Jay Carney answer of, no you cannot see the proof, and there’s something terribly wrong with you for asking; on that other thing over there you get this “proof,” along with a smackdown of — THERE! There’s your proof! Eat it! EAT IT!!

And while they’re basking in the afterglow of their victory, high-fiving each other, the more normal-thinking people out here in the real world…you know, the ones who can hold shotguns, and shovels and picks, and throw baseballs…are going, “What the fuck is this?”

Reminds me of the “Bernie” scene from The Incredibles.

Photographic evidence. Okay, you “win.” Bernie.

Obama fired a gun. Point for your team.

Weird. Just…weird.

It’s the permanent revolution.

Marx was just pulling stuff out of his ass. Lenin and Trotsky actually made their revolution, but it didn’t at all work the way Marx said it would. Mao had the same problem. So if you read any Soviet or Chinese history (lots of vodka helps), you’ll see this long, bizarre catalog of heretical movements: Right Deviationists, Left Deviationists, Trotskyites, Mensheviks, Capitalist-Roaders, etc. They’re all some variation of the “saboteurs,” “wreckers,” “nationalists,” etc. that were constantly throwing the revolution off course.

It’s the fundamental psychological flaw of leftists: If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts. (“Theory,” for leftists, is holy writ. They love to laugh at Christian fundamentalists combing through Revelations for signs of the impending apocalypse, but they get angry — actually, physically, hair-pulling angry — when you suggest that “theory” can be wrong, i.e. empirically disproven).
- Severian | 02/04/2013 @ 09:55
Generations from now, kids are going to be taught that Obama became a 21st-century “American Caesar” because He became a master of style over substance, of communication, of visuals.

And then they’re going to see the pictures of Him, above, and inevitably ask the question “Wow, we must have been really fucked back then, huh?”
- mkfreeberg | 02/05/2013 @ 04:30
Brilliant observation. As Plinkett might say, “You didn’t notice the common thread in all of those pictures of Obama… but your brain did.”

A long while ago (it may have been at the Hive 1.0, but I can’t find it now) I observed that Obama’s pickup hoops cred might be authentic, but also probably indicative of His character in a way we wouldn’t like. He struck me as the type of guy who knew all the sneaky tricks, who would call phantom fouls after His shot wouldn’t fall, and then to yell “Respect the call!” if anyone expressed any incredulity. I haven’t seen anything since then to make me question that assessment.
- nightfly | 02/05/2013 @ 08:40
Possibly just me, but it does look like he is shooting over a road…isn’t that illegal in most parts, it is in TX!
- Rob in Katy | 02/07/2013 @ 13:55

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