Ron On Gates

Cycling down from my road trip. Plus I have a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Sommelier Guild of Atlanta tonight. That's where the Board gets together at a restaurant, drinks wine (everyone has to bring at least one bottle of wine from his cellar), eats food, and decides on what wines we will drink at upcoming events. And the Guild pays for the meal. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it. So, since I spent a half hour fixing my site problem (out of disk space) and I'm just plain lazy, here's sumpin' from Ron.

As a matter of principle, I refuse to watch or hear the grossly unqualified and even more grossly overhyped Precedent President speak. If necessary, I will read summarized transcripts of or printed excerpts from his comments on matters I deem important. This policy is one I began long ago, during the insipid Carter administration, to preclude my destroying furniture or disrupting my own household from the effects of rage and disgust at public servants who posture and lie to the citizenry from whom they acquire all power and income.

Before you assume that my behavior is based on Mr. Soetoro's pigmentation, consider that I did NOT watch Reagan or Bush I or Slick Willy or Bush II in their press conferences either, considering such events to be staged, choreographed, managed, rehearsed, and generally disingenuous propaganda performances designed to reassure core constituents and befuddle opposition with doubletalk, equivocation, circumlocution, innuendo, blamestorming, and superabundances of scarlet fish.

O.K. Now since I get most of my news from FoxNews and CNN Headline News channels (and their respective websites in case I want to revisit or more closely examine what someone has said without the editorializing of presumptuous talking heads), most of what our Kenyan-in-Chief says into cameras and microphones finds its way into my head anyway. Same thing happened with Dubya, whom I never for a moment considered qualified for or capable of doing the job of PotUS: changed the channel as soon as his face came on.

So when I became aware of the meaningless gibberish spewed by The-One-We've-Been-Waiting-For at his "press conference" last night in response to posed prompts from the still-swooning press corps, I was not surprised. He managed to give talking-point non-answers to distasteful questions, clumsily mixing aquatic fowl with the crimson fish. But that item about his friend "Professor" Gates and the run-in with the Cambridge police Sergeant responding to a citizen's call about a possible B & E is just too goddam much.

First of all, you don't say "I don't know all the facts" and then finish up with "the police acted stupidly." That's pure ignorance at work. What upsets me most is that he purposefully and undeniably played the race card -- no question about it.

As for Gates, well . . . clearly the guy's agenda is right out of the Al Sharpton playbook. His goal was simply to get media attention, very likely to revive flagging sales of whatever whiney-ass drivel about racism he's tried to foist upon the already guilt-ridden American conscience.

Here's the police report. Read it for yourself and determine which card game who was playing: