I thought Obama was a chess player and that he had a plan that

[Raven]

looked way ahead of the rest of us. I think I was wrong. Not because of the election results but because of what he said after the elections.

[VMI Dem]

1. This was part of the strategy.

[laughingliberal]

2. +1 nt

[AndrewP]

4. +1 more. It's 3D Chess

[chimpymustgo]

18. It's 11 dimension Parcheesi!

[Individualist]

10. +1

[indy legend]

16. All we have to do now is loose the senate and the whitehouse in 2012.

Then we will have them right where we want them. (sarcasm) It's all part of the master plan In the words of our "great" leader, the compromiser-and-chief "relax, I got this"

[Duer 157099]

3. It's the same kind of magical thinking

that makes people think there are 72 virgins waiting for them in heaven or anything like that.

[gateley]

7. Love your answer, but gotta disagree. We've seen proof of his intelligence

and strategies. I don't think anybody's ever seen proof of those 72 virgins.

ETA: Or proof of heaven. :7

[AnArmyVeteran]

11. I'd rather have one very talented woman now, than 72 who knew nothing about sex later :)

[gateley]

12. Excellent! nt

[mkultra]

15. sorry, but we are just going to need to agree to disagree

:)

[AnArmyVeteran]

33. What if we disagree to agree instead ? :)

[timtom]

41. Good point.

But, for my part, I would rather enjoy the educational opportunities to be had with fertile, tabula rasa minds and bodies with which to work.

72!! The mind reels!

[AnArmyVeteran]

43. The 'mind' reels? LOL I don't think that's your 'mind' reeling :)

But I do agree about the other things you said!

[d_b]

5. This post is part of the strategy

[Raven]

8. From your lips to God's ear/

[RandomThoughts]

6. Or that is a chess move :)

Or a go move.

:shrug:

Still don't have beer and travel money that is due,

so :shrug:


Have you ever been asked to play a game that means nothing, and someone takes it so seriously, and you laugh as you show how little it really means.

Many peoples entire world is some silly game that don't mean anything and can be shown to not mean anything.


Becuase, I still don't have beer and travel money and experiences that are due to me.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

20. I would really be obliged to you...

If you would explain this "beer and travel money" stuff...

I have no idea what you're talking about, and I think I'm not the only one.


:shrug:

[RandomThoughts]

24. I have posted about it many times, including in threads you were posting in.

Years ago I was asked to be mean to someone I hardly knew.
Because someone said so, they were following fear and smear protocols, a guy that was landlord of some other crippled guy said he was a monster of some kind, of coarse most people also thought that same guy saying that had literally burned down the crippled guys house for insurance payments. (not a metaphor)

So I said I was not going to be mean because someone said I should be, and that if he was guilty of something then best justice through courts and systems in society should decide that, and I bought him a soft drink, while many were treating him badly.

Within a couple weeks, they were smearing me with the same lies. I was told to fear them, yet they had no way to defend or claim authority, so I was not mean. And ended up having to learn alot for a few years, then implement that learning when I got some help.


So since then I been laying trip wires and building cannons and using some other stuff from decades of thoughts. Figuring that society should be more just with compassion.

And I make the claim of a debt due to me for the loss of beer and travel money from the requierments created from those smears, and by the choice to not bow to injustice.

Although beer and travel money are really a larger context of things like choice, and justice with compassion, and many other things, it all connects in.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

29. Thank you for your explanation.

It is still a little puzzling, but not nearly as much as it was before, before you gave me context.

I appreciate it!

[RandomThoughts]

27. You reply to many of my post, and ask for an explanation then do not comment when I post an answer?

And you ask that question when I have posted that answer many times.

Why is that, are you only seeing some of the posts?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

28. I'm sorry, I hadn't seen your earlier post.

I did read it, and I appreciate your efforts.

I'm not always here, even though it might seem like it.

[RandomThoughts]

34. I have issues with impatience, always have.

My error there.

:hug:

Working on that also :)

[AnArmyVeteran]

9. Better stick to checkers. Most people understand checkers, but not chess.

[Smarmie Doofus]

13. He thinks that gradually privatizing public schools is a sound way...

... to *reform* them.

He thinks... or says he does....that his religion tells him that heterosexual unions are superior to homosexual ones.

He thinks that Iraqi-zation and Afghani-zation of the ME wars is a good way to END them.

He's not stupid; far from it,actually. But he's no genius.

As a chess player or as anything else.

[chimpymustgo]

19. You know, I have been honestly surprised: the dude is not as smart as I had thought.

I always worried that he was weak, timid, with not enough fight...too eager to compromise. But I thought he was smarter than the average bear.

[Smarmie Doofus]

23. He *IS* smart, but it's clear that a lot of mediocre ideas ...

... are rolling around up there.

His *life experience* is very different than that of the average bear.

That cuts both ways, it would appear.

[katnapped]

14. 80 dimensional chess, son

NOW SHADDUP AND EAT YOUR GRUEL!

[XemaSab]

36. Can I have seconds on the gruel?

:shrug: :(

[Naturyl]

17. I gave up chess, and here's why

I tend to be a deliberator, a thinker, someone who tries to be 6 moves ahead. And guess what? I kept losing, over and over, to people who really had no business beating me. Why? Because they were NOT thinkers and I was playing against them as if they were. Therefore my assumptions were wrong and my ass was handed to me.

Intellectual chess will not beat these people. In their minds, they are playing checkers.

[JoePhilly]

22. Then you should have studied the game.

A person who actually understands the game of chess, and critical elements, should almost never lose to a "non-thinker".

If you understand Chess strategy, and play with that foundation, then bad moves from non-thinkers don't throw you off.

Your moves would be strategically sound, which means their "goodness" is not determined by what the opponent does next. They are strategically "good moves" because the help create or maintain small advantages that can grow over time.

If you got your ass handed to you ... it was not the unpredictable play of your opponents, it was the flaws in your moves from a strategic perspective.

I know that many on the left hate the chess analogy when used with Obama. Much easier to complain about his last move. But in real high level chess, the opening, and the mid-game are nothing. It is the end game that matters. And everything that happens in the opening and the mid-game, for all its twists, ultimately ends in an end-game.

The main reason that the chess analogy has use in the political world we have now, is that to get something BIG politically, you need to be thinking about the END GAME. We on the left tend to want the 4-move check mate. We don't have the patience to slog through the opening and the mid-game, such that we reach the end game with a small, but unbeatable end-game.

[XemaSab]

37. Well described

So which chess style is Obama playing?

'Cause it looks to me like he's getting his ass kicked by amateurs.

[JoePhilly]

42. The only aspect of the chess analogy that I think I would use relative to Obama ...

Is that he takes the long view in pretty much all cases. And when I say long view, I don't mean in terms of days, but years. What he's trying to do in all cases is create a foundation that the GOP will not be able to dismantle at some future point, long after he leaves office.

As for getting his ass kicked, that's pretty silly. He's accomplished a great deal in just two years. Probably more than any President in my life time.

But for many on the left, they want that 4 move check mate, the slam dunk, the home run, the hole in one, the bomb for a touch down.

And they want it on every single play.

[Gold Metal Flake]

21. Dude, look on the bright side...

MORE FRACKING!! YAY!!!

[leeroysphitz]

25. Look closer at the situation. Obama has the republicans right where he wants them.

Boehner and Co. have fallen right into his trap.

[deaniac21]

31. Yep

Can't wait to see part 2 of the trap!

[Canuckistanian]

26. Now it seems he's only been playing checkers

And he's had to "king" his opponents.

[paulk]

30. actually he's a poker player

and not a very good one, since he seems to specialize in telling the other side what his hand is before the betting even starts...

[Juche]

32. I agree. He is a decent guy but not a very good politician

He doesn't seem to understand the situation he is in, or he doesn't want to understand it. People were yelling at him in January 2009 that the GOP had no interest in bipartisanship. Any bipartisanship would just be seen as 'appeasement' by the GOP base and lead to primaries from the right, and any legislative successes would be tools Obama used to win reelection in 2012. But he seriously believed the GOP wanted to cooperate. He seems to be doing the same thing now. The GOP, as a party, has little to gain and much to lose by cooperating with Obama. Any GOP politician who is seen as 'cooperating' with Obama is going to get primaried by the Tea party. What does Obama think the GOP base is going to do to politicians who cooperate with the Antichrist or a Kenyan marxist manchurian candidate? Re-elect them and donate money to them? Is Obama truly ignorant or does he just not want to face this fact?

And he has sadly walked a path that has alienate his base because of how tepid he is w/o realizing that the GOP base will hate him no matter if his legislation is tepid or progressive.

He isn't a bad guy, but he doesn't seem to be very good at what he does (politics).

[FrenchieCat]

35. Obama would be a chess player, but since most of us are playing Tiddlewinks

it can't be a contest.

In fact, he said he needed us, because he couldn't do it by himself.
He also said that change is hard and slow, and that it would take more than one term.

Most gave him 9 months, since the media has been saying that we would lose congress since
October of 2009.

or Perhaps he's not a chess player after all,
and considering the way we pretend not to know how politics works,
or how legislation is made, the game wasn't ever gonna be fair anyways.

[TBF]

50. Well you're actually close on this -

"the game wasn't ever gonna be fair anyways" - that's probably the best thing you've ever said on DU. When you've got 1% of the people in this country controlling 40% of the wealth it is not a level playing field. The poor are always at a disadvantage and will remain so until we get rid of Capitalism.

[rug]

38. He is but they kicked his board off the table.

He is dismayed.

[XemaSab]

39. If that's what happened, we're all in for it

Do you want a president who is the George McFly to the republicans' Biff?

Or do you want a president who is Marty McFly?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KCIOrEa9gU

[GoCubsGo]

46. IIRC

George McFly decked Biff in the end and knocked him out...

[JVS]

49. But only in the reality altered by Marty. It seems that the first time around...

Biff had his way with Marty's mom, who went on to become an alcoholic.

[Hubert Flottz]

40. More like pin the tale on the donkey...

and the donkey is the one with the blindfold.

[blm]

44. The Dem establishment in DC DID succeed. Like they did in 94. They WANT Social Security privatized

or cut drastically, just like the GOP, but, too many progressive Dems in a Dem MAJORITY headed by a progressive Dem were in the way.

There is a reason Tim Kaine dropped Dean's 50 state strategy. Establishment Dems look at Clinton's terms as successful...for welfare 'reform', for NAFTA, for deregulating financial industry, and continuing GHWBush's global policies.

The tears created in Social Security safety net will conveniently be blamed on......Dem WH.

[MadHound]

45. I think that Obama's inexperience in the world of high level politics is hurting him, and us.

As a one term Senator, I just don't think that he had the experience, and frankly the "chits" to call in favors and get things done. In DC, if you're going to be the president, you have to either know where the bodies are buried or have a lot favors owed to you. Obama has neither, and his personal inclination to find a compromised solution is being taken advantage of time and again. What we needed was an experienced fighter, somebody who knew where the bodies were buried and wasn't afraid to fight for what was right.

[AndrewP]

47. +1

[Brickbat]

48. Chess has an end game and is played to win. I haven't seen either of those in his work so far.