The Rookie

I was watching a baseball game yesterday. I forget the teams as neither of them were the Astros, and I was hit with an epiphany.  Not the life-changing type where you see the futility in the way you live your life, or even a minor one where you come to grips with the stranglehold your cat has on your home.  No, this was just a BGO, or a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious.  In this case I now understand why President Obama has to have a never-ending stream of crises.

In the baseball game, the count was three balls and one strike. The next pitch came in and might have, if the plate umpire held his head at a certain angle, kept one eye closed, and basically disregarded the location of the home plate itself, been called a strike. And “STRIKE” is what he yelled out, much to the chagrin of the batter. From my seat in front of the television I simply shrugged. After all you don’t argue balls and strikes with the umpire, or at least not for very long.  Then the revelation came. The announcer stated, and with years of baseball experience under his belt, and probably a tobacco product in his cheek, “Yep,” he proclaimed, “if you’re a rookie, you just don’t get that call.”  That was it. The batter was a rookie. He didn’t merit the umpire’s more deferential treatment of a seasoned hitter who knew what he was doing and where the pitch was.

Obama is a rookie. He makes the last out of an inning trying to steal third. He catches the fly ball in the outfield and casually tosses it into the stands only to learn that it was the second out and not the third.  He misses the sign for the squeeze play and the runner from third is an easy out at the plate.  He laments the release of an Internet movie as the cause of the Benghazi murders. He proudly proclaims that the US will “lead from behind” in the Libyan uprising. He proclaims the lifting of sanctions and praises the agreement with the Iranians, who quickly disavow many of the key points of the “agreement.” His “red line in the sand” comments regarding Syrian use of weapons of mass destruction quickly disappear in the Syrian dust as Obama disavows any such statement. His economic sanctions of Russia over the Crimean land grab lead to a deep belly laugh by Vladimir Putin as he wraps his military muscle around the peninsula. And finally, he swaps five unrepentant terrorists and killers for Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier hardly considered distinguished by his fellow soldiers. For this he states he will not apologize.

Is it any wonder people wince when Obama starts to speak? Has anyone mentioned the Veteran’s Administration this last week? That embarrassment was quickly overshadowed by the Bergdahl fiasco. Unless Obama, or some of his accomplices quickly put the kibosh on any Army criminal investigation of Bergdahl, all of the White House rational will unravel and Obama and his team of nitwits will lunge for some other event to shift the focus away. Unless you have sold your soul to the Democrat machine, we know who and what Obama is.  We now know how he operates. His snake oil is substandard. He does not merit America’s deferential treatment. I can hear it now. “STRIKE THREE!”