Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Obama shoots a little pool while his nation crumbles.
Clearly unconcerned with the "optics" of enjoying himself while the Israel and Hamas go to war, ISIS takes control of Iraq, welfare waifs by the tens of thousands, many of them gang members, pour across the border to suck at the generous American welfare teat, Americans on welfare reach record numbers, untold numbers of Americans give up looking for work, and scandal after scandal surround his disaster of a presidency, Obama seems more out off touch than any President in my memory.
I'll won't be holding my breath waiting for the media to finally turn on him as they would have years ago if he'd been any other President.
6 comments:
I get the impression that Obama has misspent more than a few hours over the fuzzy green felt. His stance is perfect, his grip is relaxed, the heel of his bridge hand is firmly in contact with the cloth, and his head is directly over the stick. I bet I could kick his ass in an afternoon of 8-ball, 9-ball, pill pool or straight pool, though.
What is pill pool? And now that I think of it, what is straight pool? We play 8-ball and 9-ball on ours, but we could use another game.
Pill pool actually has several names including Keely and Kelly. It is played with 15 numbered pills in a shaker bottle (formerly leather, now mostly plastic). There are variations on the game but we draw pills to determine the shooting order. We continue that same order for the rest of the playing session. Then, prior to each break, players draw a pill, taking care not to reveal the number. The balls are addressed in numerical order. As long as a player contacts the lowest numbered ball first, any ball potted stays down. Fouls give the next player ball in hand. If another player knocks your numbered ball in, you sit down. If you pot your own numbered ball, you win. Caroms, combinations (and blind luck) are common. It typically is a betting game.
Straight pool is the game Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman played in the movie "The Hustler". In my view, straight pool is to 8-ball as classical music is to rap.
So you don't play 8-ball I take it? Still, how does straight pool differ? Didn't pay attention to that in the movie.
Oh, I play 8-ball. I can't find anybody anymore with the patience to play straight pool. In straight pool, the breaker attempts to drive two corner balls to the rail and back into the rack and the cue ball back to the head rail, ideally leaving his opponent with no shot. This cat and mouse game goes on until one player feels like he can pot a ball (any ball in any pocket). With every attempt to pot a ball the player tries to dislodge one or two balls from the rack in order to have a followup shot. (He does not want to bust the rack open so that his opponent does not have a shot if he were to miss.) Only 14 balls are potted. The 15th ball remains on the table while the other 14 are re-racked. The player currently on the table then tries to pot the "break ball" and at the same time dislodge a ball or two from the rack so that he can continue his run. Good players can make runs into the hundreds of balls, going seamlessly from rack to rack to rack.
Sounds complicated and time consuming. Around our house we play 8-ball, 9-ball, and cut-throat if we have 3 people standing around.
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