Obama did it again today, called in ten of the usual friendly pencils to plant news among the quasi-official press. It was supposed to be private, off-the-record, just us elites who sit at the grown-up table, but one of them, David Ignatius of the Washington Post spilled the beans, or summarized the beans. I deeply resent this collaboration between the "president of all the people" and these sycophantic, ass-licking, enablers of the Third Estate. From the Quasi-Official New York Times:

Mr. Obama made his comments during a nearly two-hour meeting with the columnists and other opinion writers on Tuesday afternoon, about 10 in all, just hours before the debate and when his frustration with Republican criticism was evident. He appeared especially exasperated with Mr. Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims’ entering the United States. Mr. Obama said that Mr. Trump’s comments on Muslims did not make him an outlier in the presidential field, but instead represented the culmination of many years of a Republican strategy of division and fear mongering.

That is utter bullshit, utter and complete bullSHIT. It's all a vast right-wing conspiracy to Obama. And he is utterly wrong.

Mr. Obama is set to leave on Friday for two weeks in Hawaii and will stop on the way in San Bernardino to meet privately with the families of the 14 victims of the attack there on Dec. 2.

Ha! So that's what it is. "Mind the store for me when I'm gone, will ya fellas?" He has them in his hip pocket, along with some golf tees. 

In Mr. Obama’s absence, White House officials are concerned by the void that is likely to be filled by his critics and by what they call the overheated claims of Republicans who can afford to be bellicose without the responsibilities of the commander in chief.

Right to be concerned! But, again, it's all a conspiracy to him, he is contemptuous of anybody who disagrees vehemently with him. "They're only saying this because they have the luxury of not having their finger on the button." That is facile, out-of-touch arrogance. "I'm right, I'm always right; they're wrong, they're always wrong. When's tee time?" I don't know this guy! 

He also expressed pique at Republicans. For all of the attention paid to Mr. Trump, he said, the ideas that the Republican candidates are promoting have been part of a longer-term strategy of the party. And they have been successful to a point, Mr. Obama added, noting that many Americans believe he is a Muslim who was not born in the United States. 

And it's personal. Yes, any reasonable person would be outraged with the birth truthers. That is utter bullshit but Trump's wacko leadership in the birth truther nut house does not make everything he says emanate from the same source. Benjy, the mentally handicapped boy in The Sound and the Fury was very perceptive. The village idiot can be underestimated. 

I read recently that Obama is advised that he is never going to have a good relationship with Vladimir Putin because Putin and the Russians "don't like people of color." I think there is some truth to that! But that's not the whole truth and it's Hawaii laziness to think it is. 

Maybe he is a "rigid ideologue," racial. I don't know. I don't know the guy.