Sucks to be President of The United States

I tried to sit through the 14 min Islamophobic video that has apparently ignited the protests in Egypt, Libya and now Yemen. Its so shockingly shlocky I'm amazed anyone has watched it. To spare you the insult upon your discerning sensibilities by sending you to YouTube, I'll describe it as a bad imitation of a Sasha Baron Cohen flick, without the satire... if you can imagine that.

The movie titled "Innocence of the Muslims" was apparently directed by Sam Bacile an "Israeli American Jew" who told the Wall Street Journal that he was backed by 100 Jewish donors who raised five million dollars for the film. Turns out Sam may be Coptic (Egyptian Christian) named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula living in California. The AP has reportedly traced the phone used by "Sam" to Nakoula. And the 100 Jews, may just be the voices in his head...

And the feature film? Well there maybe no feature at all, just the trailer that was released on YouTube in July, which got zero attention in the English speaking world. But as of a few day ago when the sub-titled version in Arabic was released—the s*it hit the fan. Just as soon as the protests broke out in Egypt bloggers began looking into the veracity of the film. WNYC's On The Media reporter Sarah Abdurrahman pointed out all the bad over-dubs, which contain the most incendiary anti-Muslim bits.

It may just be a handful of yahoo Christian activists that conceived then marketed this flick, deceiving SAG actors in the process. This would only make the protests sparked by the film and subsequent deaths of US diplomats in Libya all the more tragic. The Obama admin suspects the attack on the US embassy in Libya a pre-planned terrorist plot using the protests for cover. Maddow explains.

There's an article up on Vanity Fair by Michael Lewis who has been on a press junket talking about the six months he spent with the President. Lewis is the author of "Moneyball" and usually writes about finance and the economy for VF. For some reason Obama agreed to let Lewis tag along and get a sense of his day to day routine.

The man is presented with situations, options, advice and opinions on world changing situations... on an hourly basis.  The demands of making the "right" decisions are so intense, that Obama has paired down all non-essential decisions in the rest of his life, like getting rid of all his suits except for gray and navy ones so he doesn't have to decide what to wear. (There's a study described by Lewis which states that the more decisions you have to make the less you effective you are.)

what a difference four years makes.

Unlike his predecessor and, it seems, his current challenger POTUS likes to be challenged by his team then go into his man cave and emerge with a solution. However these solutions only ever have a 51% chance of working, with a 3% margin of error the stakes are pretty high.

Lewis describes Obma's 3x a week b-ball game played with dudes who played college and pro ball. Obama plays with a mouth guard because players don't treat him with any deference on the court, otherwise they don't get asked back. Being that Obama doesn't have the skills or the youth that the rest of the players he's developed a consistent 3-point shot. Apparently he aims before he shoots.