March 3, 2021
As far as I know The Queen’s Gambit refers to a game of Bobby Fischer’s.* It’s the one where he won the New York Chess Championship at 15 or 17, something like that. He sacrificed his queen and knew he had won the game. I’ve played that game. I don’t understand how he knew. The game went for another seventeen moves.
*Okay, technically, I think it means offering your Queen up as a sacrifice.
I can think ahead three or four, maybe five moves, but seventeen?
To play competitive chess is different than any other game, other than perhaps Go.
To watch the Netflix’s series entitled The Queen’s Gambit you don’t have to understand chess to appreciate what is going on. I have read some minor criticism, like “she wasn’t a real chess master,” or “the ending devolved into troupe.” All of which is crap. It’s a terrific series. The end is fabulous, dramatic and gripping.
I have my chess heroes. One was the best player in the 1800s who reportedly stood on his chair, pointed to his opponent and shouted, “Why do I have to play this idiot?”
Another is Bobby Fischer. Yes, he became mentally imbalanced at the end and he said some terrible things, but when he played he was without equal.
The Queen’s Gambit is based largely on his life.
Many real good chess players go mad, so …
I saw him play once. He had just won the world championship. He was on The Dinah Shore Show. She interviewed him. There was a chess board positioned between their chairs. He was clearly intrigued with her. She would ask him something or other and he would answer, while gazing moonily at her. Then she would say, “It’s your move.”
He would glance at the board and without hesitation he would move a piece. The way he moved was to slide the piece along the board, pick it up, and then plop it in place with a resounding thud.
She would ask him, “Why did you move there?”
And he would explain. “You will move here.” Swish – thud. “Then I will go there.” Swish – thud. “You will move here.” Swish – thud. “And I will take you with my bishop” Swish – thud.
This would go on for six or eight moves. He would be holding the pieces taken between the slots of his fingers, two per slot, until he had six in each hand.
Dinah would say, “Oh.”
And then he would put them all back in place with the same swish – thud sounds, in reverse order.
It was intimidating, and I was watching this on a small black and white TV!
How this informs us about today’s world I don’t know. In fact, there is a lot I don’t know the answers to, but we’ll get to that in a bit. First, let’s deal with somethings happening in the world. Wait! Let’s call it The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Clever, huh? The last one, The Ugly, will deal with Andrew Cuomo and sexual harassment. What do we do with that? Do we throw the baby out with the bath water? Would New York have been better off without Cuomo? I think not. So what do we do? One answer is he could switch sides, become a Republican, where they’d slap him on the back say, “Boys will be boys,” and move on. Let’s think about it, and what to do.
But now, The Good, President Biden announced he has arranged for enough vaccine for every adult in this country to be vaccinated by the end of May, pulling up the schedule by two months. Not only is that incredible, imagine if Satan had won? We’d still be seeing the death toll climbing.
Now for The Bad, actually no, let’s call it The Truth!
The FBI Director, appointed by Trump testified before The Senate about what happened on January 6th. I have to say I am disappointed that we no longer have corporal punishment. If we did then Ron Johnson could have been brought out front and center and publicly whipped because Wray shot down all his stupid and silly assertions about what happened on the 6th and who did it.
No, it was not Antifa.
No, it was not leftists dressed up in Trump costumes.
Yes, it was right wing militia groups.
Yes, it was white supremacists.
Yes, it was Trump supporters.
Bad Ron, Bad Boy.
And that goes for your sniveling sidekick Josh Hawley, who is becoming quite the naive kid of the Senate. Those who watched the proceedings (I did not) said it seemed Hawley wanted to know what and how the FBI was collecting and did collect information. It seemed to some that Hawley was trying to figure out if they could discover messages he or his staff may have put out there and could they get caught. Speaking of which, I saw a list of people in the House and Senate who reputedly gave tours of the Capitol on January 5th, which was thought to be weird at the time because they weren’t normally giving tours. Were these people on the tour on a recon mission? Did the people giving the tours know this? If the list of those giving the tours is correct than it is mighty suspicious. For example, white supremacist keynote speaker Paul Gosar gave a tour. Hum.
Then we have the lawyer for the Republican party arguing in the Supreme Court why they are bringing over 250 laws to try and change the ability of people to vote in a majority of the states. These laws would restrict who could vote and how they could vote. This is called voter suppression. Why do they, the Republicans, need these laws? The lawyer explained. If everyone votes they would lose. Plain and simple. There was no fig leaf to hide behind.
Today the Senate will hear from the Pentagon as to why it took so long to deploy the National Guard. The corollary to this is why was Michael Flynn’s brother in the meetings about this and why did the Pentagon lie about that fact? Should be interesting.
Now to a more structural problem. It appears no Republican Senators are going to vote for anything Joe Biden wants to do. They got nothing themselves. So why are they there? What purpose do they serve other than to gum up the works and do nothing?
Even with the massively favorable Covid bill and the infrastructure bill they plan to not vote for it, as a block.
I am told the only way to get anything more done is to get rid of the filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to pass anything, and to pass that they need I think 50 votes and they only have 49. So the Senate will be dead to anything happening for the next two years once these two very popular bills get passed.
PS Josh Hawley the insurrectionist (left), Josh Hawley, the concerned Senator (right)
Rachel Maddow’s show was rated to top show on cable for January and February. Maybe people like accurate truthful reporting?
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