And if the Tsar...

President Obama: "I hope you will keep an open mind and evalute #Obamacare based on what it does to improve lives." pic.twitter.com/79WXAkN1BK
— Stronger Together (@UniteBlue) December 1, 2013

Very sweet and patient, but I was kind of gobsmacked by the denial that the president has "'made fun' of tea-baggers." Can he really be unaware that using that term is making fun of them ipso facto? Is he that innocent, or isolated?

Well, remember when David Axelrod had never heard of hippy-punching? And Eric Holder found out what waterboarding is in 2008? Remember when Obama came out attacking his own education policy as if it were some exoticially dreadful idea from the future, luckily too remote for us to really have to worry about it?

one thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you.

They seem just about as cynical as they need to be when dealing with Iran, or Israel, and then if you turn around and look back they seem to have taken on this really touching sincerity. Honestly, it's hard for me to disbelieve it, if only because so much simple faith in people looks kind of like a handicap, something you'd frankly prefer your president not to have. What's up with that?

Teabag installation by Armén Rotch, via Inhabitat.