The Best Poker Player in the Land

Today, President Obama squashed the lunatic fringe that controls the Republican Party by releasing a copy of his his "long-form" birth certificate from Hawaii, which, BTW, any good investigative reporter could have obtained years ago, had any of the clueless conspiracy theorists only asked for our help, thereby avoiding what today is an embarrassment of historical proportions.

Meanwhile, today the right wing in the U.S. crashed and burned.

In their death plunge, they took along with them probably the biggest fool in the land, Donald Trump.

You know, there are a number of good things about our country, but none of them are named Donald Trump. And none of them are on the right-wing.

There are ironies here, not the least of which is Trump's last name. He tried to call down a superior poker player, a fellow called Obama.

Trump and all of those who agree with him are racists, pure and simple. The only reason they have wasted the past three years chasing their ignorant "birther" fantasy is they cannot accept that our fairly elected President is an African-American who just happens to also bear his father's Islamic-sounding name.

His father's last name. Like any other American man.

Too bad. Not only have these fools lost the card game, courtesy of a far-smarter competitor, they have as of tonight ended the conservative wing's chances of holding onto the marginal gains they made in last fall's Congressional elections.

You read it here first. Not only will Obama be re-elected in a landslide, whether he deserves it or not, the GOP will lose its majority in the House and the Democrats will increase their majority in the Senate.

You see, my friends, in politics as in poker you have to know when to hold them and you have to know when to fold them. And you have to know when to walk away.

As a fairly good poker player myself, regardless of what I think about his politics personally, I have to congratulate Barack Obama tonight. It wasn't his choice to have to play the race card, by his telling, or to reveal his opponents in all of their ugliness, but he decided to do so now, and I have to trust his sense of timing.

More importantly, now maybe we can all move on to debating the issues that actually matter. And maybe Obama will become a better leader in the process. Let's hope so, because we need him to be.

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