Republicans Playing Calvinball

One of the maddening things about being a rational person following today's politics is that sane people just aren't prepared to grapple 24/7 with the weird Calvinball that the modern-day GOP plays.

Just yesterday I suggested that the Democrats could make hay at Romney's expense by hammering him about his refusal to produce his tax records. However, I also suggested that Obama should not personally be the one calling for their production because he shouldn't open himself up to the possibility of getting pwned if Romney suddenly decided to release the records, the way that Donald Trump got pwned when Obama released his long-form birth certificate right before the Washington Correspondents' Dinner.

And today I see that Craig Romney is suggesting that his dad will release his tax records when Obama releases his birth certificate. Huh? Haven't we already covered this?

Apparently not. Apparently for the Crazies now running the GOP asylum the very Structure of the Universe means that it is impossible for Obama ever to have released his birth certificate, even though he now has done so on multiple occassions (including his very public humiliation of Donald Trump with it at that Correspondents' Dinner).

This is what I mean by Calvinball. Today's Republicans really will tell you that the sky is green if they think saying so will get them an extra political point. They really will change the rules two seconds after telling you what the rules are, if they think they can get away with it.

The Real Reason Obama Waited Until Last Week to Release his Long-Form Birth Certificate

For all the last part of last week we were treated to political pundits and professional entrail-readers speculating about why Obama 'waited' until last week to release his long-form birth certificate. There was much rumination about whether it was because Trump was surging in the Republican polls, or whether it was designed to cut the legs off of Jerome Corsi's imminent book Where's the Birth Certificate? What kind of 11th-Dimension political chess was Obama playing by timing the release when he did?

Well, have you seen Obama's speech at this weekend's White House Correspondents Dinner? It was hilarious, particularly the first two videos that accompanied it. The first, before he began speaking, was a music video featuring a (really quite horrible) rock song titled "I am a Real American" and featuring (several times) a throbbing picture of the long-form birth certificate center screen.

The second came after Obama announced he was going to prove he had been born in Hawaii by showing everybody his "birth video." Suddenly the room was pierced by a loud cry and African-sounding music, and the screen started showing the beginning of Disney's The Lion King, with the baby lion being anointed by the baboon and all the other African animals bowing in obeisance toward him.

When that clip finished Obama asked, "Where's the Fox table? Look, I want to make sure you guys know that that was a joke. That was not really my birth video, it was a children's cartoon. If you don't believe me, Disney has the long-form."

So I don't think Obama waited until last week to release the long-form birth certificate for any 11th-Dimension political reason. I think he timed it just so his performance at the WHCD would be really, really funny. This wasn't about politics, this was about comedy. And given how pissy Donald Trump got about it, it worked out really, really well.