Richard Cohen seems to be experiencing some buyer’s remorse in regard to Barack Obama. Last week in a column, Mr. Cohen lamented that Barack Obama has lost much of the “moral clarity” that he had when he was running for president. To be specific, Mr. Cohen wrote the following—

“But to reread the speech is also to come face to face with an Obama of keen moral clarity. Here was a man who knew why he was running for president and knew, also precisely, what he personified. He could talk to America both as a black man and a white man — having lived in both worlds. He could — and he did — explain to America what it is like to have been a black man of Wright’s age and what it is like even now to be a black man of any age.”

Gee—I didn’t think that was a qualification to run for president (maybe a qualification to be a motivational speaker), but I digress.

Then, after admitting that he had been the one “In my set” to have some reservations about Barack Obama (even though he wrote nothing but glowing columns about Obama pre-election), Mr. Cohen wrote the following—

“Somehow, though, that moral clarity has been dissipated. The Obama who was leading a movement of professed political purity is the very same person who as president would not meet with the Dalai Lama, lest he annoy the very sensitive Chinese. He is the same man who bowed to the emperor of Japan when, in my estimation, the president of the United States should bow to no man. He is the same president who in China played the mannequin for the Chinese government, appearing at stage-managed news conference and appearances — and having his remarks sometimes censored. When I saw him in that picture alone on the Great Wall, he seemed to be saying, “What the hell am I doing here?” If so, it was a good question.

The Barack Obama of that Philadelphia speech would not have let his attorney general, Eric Holder, announce the new policy for trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants in criminal court, as if this was a mere departmental issue and not one of momentous policy. And the Barack Obama of the speech would have enunciated a principle of law and not an ad hoc system in which some alleged terrorists are tried in civilian courts and some before military tribunals. Where is the principle in that — what works, works? Try putting that one on the Liberty Bell.”

Furthermore, Maureen Dowd also seems to be experiencing some buyer’s remorse in regard to vigorously supporting Barack Obama. In a recent column (where she actually has some nice things to say about Sarah Palin), Ms. Dowd writes the following—

“If we could see a Reduced Shakespeare summary of Obama’s presidency so far, it would read:

Dither, dither, speech. Foreign trip, bow, reassure. Seminar, summit. Shoot a jump shot with the guys, throw out the first pitch in mom jeans. Compromise, concede, close the deal. Dither, dither, water down, news conference.”

Now, I find Mr. Cohen and Ms. Dowd’s change of heart towards President Obama to be a bit curious. I mean, anyone with a seventh grade education and a mouse could have found out that Obama would “dither” and “concede” when it came to Afghanistan and would go out of his way to project weakness to the rest of the world. I mean, Obama had the most left-wing voting record in the Senate, he openly bragged in debates about his willingness to meet with dictators and shut down Gitmo, and he never even held one hearing on Afghanistan as a Senator despite chairing a subcommittee on NATO, so I’m not sure what else these two could have expected.

However, I did a little digging into both Mr. Cohen’s and Ms. Dowd’s columns regarding President Obama, and what I found was quite interesting. In March of 2008, Richard Cohen wrote a column titled, “Taking the Call on Black Men” where he basically acknowledged that Hillary Clinton was more qualified to deal with national security issues, or the “3 AM call”, but that Barack Obama should be president instead, because he was more qualified “to take the call on black men in prison”. Why? Well, I’m not really sure. Mr. Cohen doesn’t say what Obama’s qualifications are in regard to dealing with disproportionately high levels of black men in prison, other than being black himself (which I don’t think is an actual qualification).

Furthermore, in November of 2008, right after Obama was elected president, Maureen Dowd wrote a column titled, “The Tracks of Our Tears” where she prattled on about how white people were finally talking to black people in Manhattan and about how she deigned to ask her “cute black mailman” what he thought about the election of Obama. (The Gawker mocked her boasting in that column that Gwen Ifil was her one black friend). Someone should inform Ms. Dowd that we bitter clingers in the south and middle America have been talking to black people long before Obama came along, but I digress.

So, now I’m going to be politically incorrect here and diagnose Richard Cohen and Maureen Dowd with a raging case of white liberal guilt. I mean, why else would someone so enthusiastically support a candidate that he or she has “reservations” about? Especially when said candidate’s campaign was, to quote liberal reporter John Heilemann, “a policy free zone”. It must be because of all of Barack Obama’s long years of legislative experience. Oh, wait a minute—I forgot. Barack Obama is an inexperienced neophyte with unsavory friends. Well, wait. Maybe it was the outstanding leadership on Afghanistan that Obama demonstrated when he was a US Senator. Oh wait a minute—I forgot. As previously stated, Barack Obama didn’t hold one hearing of his Senate subcommittee that he chaired on NATO forces in Afghanistan. Is it any wonder that he was “dithering” for so long about whether or not to send more troops into Afghanistan? Moreover, given the fact that both Mr. Cohen and Ms. Dowd seem to have serious disagreements with many of Obama’s decisions, white liberal guilt seems to be the only logical reason for their past vociferous support of him (and trashing of everyone else who ran against him).

Now, to be fair to Mr. Cohen and Ms. Dowd, a plethora of reporters and pundits suffered from white liberal guilt when it came to covering Barack Obama. Recently, Chris Matthews made a flaming ass of himself when he suggested that racism is at the heart of Sarah Palin’s support. To be specific, Mr. Matthews said the following—

“Well, they look like a white crowd to me,” later claiming, “I think there is a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs. other people.”

“Oh nooos!! The white people are coming!! The white people are coming!! Everybody, flee, flee for your lives!!”

However, the biggest offender of white liberal guilt to date has to be John Judis of The New Republic. Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler chronicled some of the ridiculousness of Judis’ ramblings—

“Clinton’s second great political mistake lay in how she dealt with Obama’s challenge. Sometime in December, having realized that Obama was going to be a genuine rival for the nomination, she and her campaign decided to go negative on him. They did the usual thing politicians do to each other: They ran attack ads taking his words somewhat out of context (Obama calling Reagan a “transformative politician”); they somewhat distorted old votes (voting “present” in Illinois on abortion bills); and they questioned old associations (Obama’s connection with real estate developer Tony Rezko).

John McCain and Mitt Romney were doing similar things to each other—and Obama did some of it to Clinton, too. But there a was difference between her doing this to Obama and McCain’s doing it to Romney—a difference that eluded Clinton, her husband, and her campaign staff.

My friend David Kusnet, Bill Clinton’s former speechwriter, explained the difference to me by citing what ex-heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson had once said about Muhammad Ali. “I was just a fighter,” Patterson had said, “but he was history.” Obama, too, was, and is, history—the first viable African-American presidential candidate. Yes, Hillary Clinton was the first viable female candidate, but it is still different. Race is the deepest and oldest and most bitter conflict in American history—the cause of our great Civil War and of the upheavals of the 1950s and ’60s. And if some voters didn’t appreciate the potential breakthrough that Obama’s candidacy represented, many in the Democratic primaries and caucuses did—and so did the members of the media and Obama’s fellow politicians. And as Clinton began treating Obama as just another politician, they recoiled and threw their support to him. “

Is it over? Can I look now? Man, that was an embarrassing gaffe (you know what they say—a gaffe is when you accidentally tell the truth), because it was unintentionally racist. Maybe I don’t understand white liberal guilt, because I didn’t grow up in a segregated era and both my husband and I have always had friends, and even family members, of all races and ethnicities. Furthermore, as a medical student, I had more minority attending physicians than white ones. Anyway, my point is that I think that most of my minority friends, family members, and attending physicians would probably find it to be offensive and patronizing if I were to blindly “throw my support to them” and not treat them like I treat everyone else because it would imply that they were too weak to stand on their own and be judged on their own merits, when they are in all ways my equals—and in some instances, my superiors.

Now, back during the 2008 election, Ron Rosenbaum of Slate magazine made the point that white liberal guilt was a good thing when he wrote the following—

“Since when has guilt become shameful? Since when is shame shameful when it’s shame about a four-centuries-long historical crime? Not one of us is a slave owner today, segregation is no longer enshrined in law, and there are fewer overt racists than before, but if we want to praise America’s virtues, we have to concede—and feel guilty about—America’s sins, else we praise a false god, a golden calf, a whited sepulcher, a Potemkin village of virtue. (I’ve run out of metaphors, but you get the picture.)

Guilt is good, people! The only people who don’t suffer guilt are sociopaths and serial killers. Guilt means you have a conscience. You have self-awareness, you have—in the case of America’s history of racism—historical awareness. Just because things have gotten better in the present doesn’t mean we can erase racism from our past or ignore its enduring legacy.

Well, I can easily answer Mr. Rosenbaum’s question, but in order to do this, I first need to go off on a tangent and quote Glenn Reynolds in regard to many of Obama’s voters (particularly Maureen Dowd)—

“I think Obama’s “charisma” was based on voter narcissism — people excited not just about electing a black President, but about themselves, voting for a black President. Now that’s over, and they’re stuck just with him, and emptied of their own narcissism there’s not much there to fill out the suit. As Ann Althouse says, “I think what Obama seems to have become, he always was.”

On a side note, reading Mr. Reynold’s quote reminds me of the TV miniseries V, which is about a group of aliens that try to infiltrate humanity and take over the planet earth by “spreading hope”. Anna, the leader of the aliens, controls them using “bliss”—a meditation/mind control trick where she tells them to forget all of their troubles, cares and responsibilities and to just feel good for the moment (see embed below).

So, to finally answer Mr. Rosenbaum’s question, yes, we moderates and conservatives feel terrible about slavery and segregation and the high levels of black men in prison. However, we are not going to just abandon all reason and logic and vote for some inexperienced, far left candidate just so that we can have the momentary “bliss” of patting ourselves on the back. Furthermore, we also feel terrible about unemployment and poverty, but we are not going to support some reckless, trillion dollar, budget busting porkulus bill that will only line the pockets of the Democratic special interest groups and not help any of the poor or unemployed (the stimulus has failed and unemployment is now over 10%). And finally, we also feel terrible about soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, but at the same time, we don’t support rashly pulling all of the troops out of the Middle East so that Al Qaeda and the Taliban will be victorious and more innocent people will die from future terrorist attacks.

In conclusion, white liberal guilt is a symptom of the irresponsibility and impulsiveness of liberalism. If it feels good for the moment, do it—consequences be damned. Hope, change, yada yada. Well, you know what? Mature adults understand that there are no easy solutions to real problems such as racism, poverty and unemployment, and that people who disagree with you politically are not automatically “Raaacists!!”. We also understand that everything you do in life has a consequence—that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. There are no short-cuts. There are no easy outs in life.

Dammit, there is no bliss!

There is only reality, and it’s high time that we all start living in the real world.

This diary was originally posted on The Minority Report.

This diary was originally posted on The Minority Report.

OK–first there was this video of children singing praises to The One. Next, came this video of children chanting about Obama’s greatness, while implying that he is some sort of deity (”Mmm, mmm, mmm, Barack Hussein Obama….red, yellow, black and white, all are equal in his sight”). Then, came this video of children dancing in school to yet another song about Obama (although, I found this one to be a little less bizarre, because the kids did look like they were having fun). And now, there is a fourth video out of children chanting accolades to The One (H/T Allahpundit of Hot Air–see embed below).

Is it just me, or is this really starting to get weird? I mean, I don’t remember singing praises to Ronald Reagan in school when I was growing up.

This diary was originally posted on The Minority Report.

This diary was originally posted on The Minority Report.

This diary was originally posted on The Minority Report.

Update: My, what a difference a day makes. Since I wrote this diary yesterday, several major events have unfolded in the ACORN saga. Yesterday afternoon, the two young bloggers from BigGovernment.com who produced the two videos that exposed corruption in both the Baltimore and DC ACORN offices, released another video that revealed the exact same sort in corruption in the NY ACORN office.

Then, last night, the Senate voted 83-7 to cut off housing funds to ACORN, and today the House GOP has introduced a bill to cut off all federal funding to ACORN.

And finally, today, the two bloggers from BigGovernment.com have released a fourth video–this one exposes corruption in a CA ACORN office. However, this one is particularly shocking, because the ACORN employee named Theresa basically admits to a premeditated murder of her husband whom she claims was abusive. Once again, Glenn Beck immediately covered this story (see embed below).

Now, looking back, I think that David Brooks looks pretty silly for calling Glenn Beck’s viewers “the fringe”. In the past week or so, Glenn Beck, BigGovernment.com, the conservative blogosphere and concerned citizens who called their congresspersons have been able to get Van Jones to resign, Yosi Sargent to resign or be reassigned, multiple ACORN employees fired, ACORN removed from participating in the 2010 Census and the Senate to vote 83-7 to cut off housing funds to ACORN. I find it hard to believe that “the fringe” alone could accomplish all of that.

Update 2: I was watching Fox News this evening, when I heard Bret Baier report that Charles Gibson of ABC News issued the following reply when asked about the recent ACORN scandals–

“I don’t even know about it so you’ve got me at a loss.”

Michelle Malkin has the audio and the transcript. And people wonder what Glenn Beck’s appeal is?

This diary was originally posted on The Minority Report.

Update: The Washington Times has an excellent editorial that contains even more details regarding The NEA acting as a propaganda arm of the White House. I highly recommend it.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

Update: Well, well, well. Below is an embed of a video of Hardball where Michelle Bernard literally ADMITS to voting for Barack Obama (at 53 seconds exactly). And, she had the audacity to write a post here attempting to enlighten us on school choice. Unbelievable. Maybe we should send her emails about candidate choice.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

Last Saturday, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote quite an incendiary op-ed about people who oppose Barack Obama’s health care proposals and about Republicans in general. I have pasted an excerpt of the last half of his column below–oh, and I must warn you that it really blows (pun intended).

“Not only are anti-reformists showing up, they’re terrorizing legislators with their tomfoolery when they do. Blinded by fear and passion, armed with misinformation and misplaced anger, they descend on these meetings and hoot and holler in an attempt to shut down the debate rather than add to it.

I must say that this says more about them than it does about any forthcoming legislation. Belligerence is the currency of the intellectually bankrupt.

Trapped in their vacuum of ideas, too many Republicans continue to display an astounding ability to believe utter nonsense, even when faced with facts that contradict it.

A Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll released last Friday found that 28 percent of Republicans don’t believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States and another 30 percent are still “not sure.” That’s nearly 6 out of 10 Republicans refusing to accept a basic truth. Then again, this shouldn’t surprise me. According to a Gallup poll released last summer, 6 in 10 Republicans also said they thought that humans were created, in their present form, 10,000 years ago.

Let’s face it: This is no party of Einsteins. Really, it isn’t. A Pew poll last month found that only 6 percent of scientists said that they were Republicans.

Democrats should be leading this discussion. Instead, they’re losing control of it. That’s unfortunate because the debate is too important to be hijacked by hooligans.”

Read More →

I’m sure that some of you heard that John Hughes died yesterday of a massive heart attack.  As a child (and teenager) of the 80’s, John Hughes’ movies were a rite of passage for me and I look back upon them, as well as that time in my life, with great nostalgia. Enjoy the video montage of Hughes’ movies below.  It is teh awesome–as was John Hughes.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

First of all, this video clearly demonstrates how one smart woman armed with the facts can easily smack down an entire TV show panel armed with only “Hope and Change” and “Bush Lied”. Second of all, in this video, Michelle Malkin effectively points out that, not only is Barack Obama not the white knight that he sold himself to be, but that he also might be more corrupt (or at the very least as corrupt) than most of the previous occupants of the White House. Oh, and on a side note, he’s also one of the least qualified occupants of the White House as well–scary, huh?

PS–Don’t you just love the way Sherri Shepherd angrily asks Michelle Malkin, “So what do you want me to do with this stuff?” Typical Obama voter–”Please don’t bother me with those troublesome facts. Just give me more unicorn farts and pixie dust.”

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this recent phenomenon or not, but for the past year or so, liberals have progressively become more and more flagrant with regard to making sexist, racist, or bigoted comments about anyone who ran against or voted against Barack Obama. At first, liberal sexism and bigotry started out as a distant rumble–now it has become a thunderous roar. And, if you will be kind enough to bear with me, I will demonstrate, in no uncertain terms, that I am right.

First, I will begin with liberal sexism, which ironically began when Hillary Clinton ran for president (yes, I know that she is also a Democrat, but you can’t forget that she was opposing “The One” ; therefore, she became “the enemy”). For example, you had New York Magazine Columnist, Kurt Andersen, write in a column that Hillary had a “Wal-Mart shopper’s bad hair and big bum”. (Andersen also admitted in this column that the media was rooting for Obama and called Hillary’s voters “uneducated losers and Yokels from the C and D counties” Hey Andersen–elitist much?!) Now, I wonder what Andersen would have to say if someone referred to Michelle Obama as having “Wal-Mart shopper’s bad hair and big bum”? I bet that he would think that it was a tad sexist if those same words were used on his candidate, huh? Oh, and who could forget David Shuster saying that the Clinton’s were “pimping Chelsea out”? Gee, I wonder what his reaction would have been if someone had said that about the Obamas when they brought their daughters on Access Hollywood? I bet that Shuster would have been outraged. And, Chris Matthews
managed to outrage just about every woman I know by calling Hillary Clinton “witchy”, “Nurse Ratched”, “Madame Defarge”, and by saying that here voice was “like fingernails on a chalkboard”. Once again, I wonder what Matthews’ reaction would have been if a conservative pundit had said the exact same things about Michelle Obama? And, if Matthews remarks weren’t bad enough, Keith Olbermann turned up the misogyny to full throttle when he said, in regard to Hillary, that “Someone should take her into a room and only he comes out” (translation–beat the crap out of her). Gee, I wonder what old Olbie’s response would have been if some conservative pundit had said the same thing about Michelle Obama? I bet he would have a very long winded Special Comment prepared especially for him (as well as labeling him “The Worst Person in the World”) don’t you think? And finally, Maureen Dowd managed to anger many of The New York Times’ regular readers (Clark Hoyt, the New York Times public editor, admitted as much in an op-ed; however, he later allowed Dowd to transfer her sexist venom to Sarah Palin) by writing a plethora of sexist columns about Mrs. Clinton, such as this column titled, “Can Hillary Cry her Way Back to the Whitehouse?”, this one titled, “There Will be Blood” (where she stated that Hillary “got agitated and was flapping her arms”), and this one titled, “Seeing Red over Hillary” (where she compared Hillary Clinton to Scarlet O’Hara), just to name a few. Oh, I almost forgot. Jake Tapper was the only reporter who had the stones to call out The One for using sexist code words against Hillary Clinton (like “claws coming out” and “periodically, when she’s feeling down”) and for calling a reporter “Sweetie” (and he also called out US Congressman Steve Cohen, an ardent Obama supporter, for referring to Senator Clinton as “Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction”). Come to think of it, Obama, himself, wasn’t exactly setting the most politically correct tone, was he?

[On a side note, Huffington Post blogger Jeff Norman defended former Air America radio host Randi Rhodes' right to refer to Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro as "big f**king wh*res", by stating that it was a free speech issue and by writing that Ferraro was "whining on Fox News" about the comment being sexist. Now, suppose a conservative radio host had referred to Michelle Obama as a "big f**king wh*re"? I wonder if Norman would still think that it was just "semantic quibbling about free speech"? I highly doubt it.]

Now, Hillary Clinton was just the appetizer for liberals’ sexism–Sarah Palin was the main course. When Governor Palin was announced as John McCain’s running mate, most of the liberal elites let their inner misogynist come out to play. For example, you had the usual suspects like Chris Matthews start immediately attacking her–in fact he went so overboard that Pat Buchanan called Matthews a misogynist to his face (and Pat Buchanan is hardly a staunch feminist so when he tells you that “you have a problem with strong women”, then you need serious help). Then, of course, Maureen Dowd started right where she left off with Hillary, and started writing sexist and degrading columns about Sarah Palin such as this one titled, “A Vice in Go-Go Boots” (which was loaded with sexist stereotypes such as calling Governor Palin “An underqualified babe”), or this one titled, “Mud Pies for That One” (where she called Palin “John McCain’s Mean Girl” and falsely accuses the McCain campaign of racism), or this column titled, “Sarah’s PomPom Palaver” (where she compared Palin to Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless”). Just a thought, but I wonder what Maureen Dowd would have said if a conservative pundit was writing columns about Michelle Obama that were loaded with sexist stereotypes? Take that back–I know exactly what she would way. In this column, Dowd claims that conservatives were trying to paint Michelle Obama as a “harridan”, but of course she offers absolutely no examples of how conservatives were attempting this feat. However, I find this charge incredibly hypocritical on Dowd’s part, because pretty much all she does in her b*tchy columns is paint other women as harridans, but I digress.

[Oh, if anyone is curious, I wrote a diary a while ago that went into great detail about Maureen Dowd's pathetic behavior towards other women that she's threatened by and her snobbery towards her fellow Americans.]

Now, it should be noted, that Governor Palin didn’t just make the MSM bring out it’s inner misogynist, she made some of them bring out their inner lunatic/conspiracy theorist. For instance, Andrew Sullivan wrote a blog asking Governor Palin to release her medical records to prove that her baby with Down’s Syndrome is really hers. And below, I have embedded a video of Bill Maher telling CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin that he doesn’t think that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s baby.

[My husband pointed out to me that we weren't even allowed to ask if Barack Obama was born in the US, even though his father, step father, and sister were all born outside of the US (I personally think that he was born in the US, but that's not the point.) However, members of the MSM and bloggers on Daily Kos were allowed to perpetually float their tinfoil hat theories about Sarah Palin's baby, and no one really batted an eye. (But then again, when Daily Kos bloggers routinely traffic in anti-Jewish sentiment, Markos Moulitisas simply refers to it as "democracy", so therefore, I guess that no one should really be surprised by any of the filth that appears on Daily Kos.)]

Now, if the first video wasn’t grotesque enough for you, here is another video of Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin’s daughter a “Hillbilly Heroine”, calling Sarah Palin a “MILF”, then he proceeds to make fun of her children’s names, and then he tops it off by stating that Americans are racist and aren’t very bright. Don’t believe me? Watch the embed and see for yourself.

Furthermore, liberals have continued to attack Sarah Palin with sexist bile to this day–more than six months after Barack Obama has been elected president! If that’s not sick, then I don’t know what is. For instance, everyone’s heard about David Letterman recently making a total ass out of himself by saying that Sarah Palin looks like a “slutty flight attendant” and then making a disgusting joke about her fourteen year old daughter getting knocked up by Alex Rodrgiuez (H/T Caleb Howe). However, what’s even more pathetic than Letterman’s obvious sexism and rape jokes about a fourteen year old girl, are liberals who actually defend him. For example, as Ed Morrissey of Hot Air points out, Contessa Brewer of MSNBC ( the official Obama network) seems visibly angered by conservative pundit John Ziegler’s criticisms of David Letterman and even goes so far as cutting his mike and stating that she would have no problem with being called a “slutty flight attendant” (which I find extremely hard to believe). Furthermore, as HotAirPundit points out, “Imagine if it was Michelle Obama Letterman was talking about, and he took a shot at Obama’s daughters”–I bet that Contessa Brewer would go bats**t if that happened, but I digress.

And finally, now liberals have graduated from making sexist attacks against women who run against Obama to making sexist attacks against conservative women in general. Exhibit A would be Perez Hilton calling Carrie Prejean a “stupid btch” because she disagrees with him on gay marriage, even though, as Michelle Malkin points out, she has the same position on gay marriage as Barack Obama. Exhibit B would be the column in Playboy Magazine, written by liberal blogger Guy Cimbalo, about the top ten conservative women that he would most like to “hate f*k” (translation–rape). Playboy wound up having to pull down the article because it was so offensive, but our own Caleb Howe was smart enough to save the offensive article here. However, what’s even more egregious than that misogynistic hatefest of an article, was the fact that AOL fired liberal blogger Tommy Christopher for daring to criticize the dreadful article. Tommy Christopher was one of the few liberals in the blogosphere or the MSM that had the decency to report on this outrage and not turn a blind eye to it, and he had a spot inside the White House press corps, but I guess that liberals like to protect their own–that and Playboy and AOL are both owned by Time Warner.

So, in conclusion, to take a page from Jeff Foxworthy’s playbook, if you think that it’s OK to call female candidates “witchy”, talk about their “bad hair and big bum”, imply that you’d like to beat them, call them a “mean girl”, compare them to Alicia Silverstone or Scarlett O’Hara, call them “slutty flight attendants” or “big f**king wh*res”, and make tasteless remarks and rape jokes about their female children–then you might be a sexist. Either that, or you’re a liberal who doesn’t believe in taking personal responsibility for your own actions. Oh, and if you think that it’s OK to call a woman a “stupid btch” or “hate f*k her simply because you disagree with her politics, then you’re not only a sexist, but you’re a full-blown misogynist as well.

Now, on to liberal racism and bigotry. First I’ll start with the most obvious example–Lawrence O’Donnell’s famous anti-Mormon rant in which he states that “Mitt Romney comes from a religion that was founded by a criminal who was anti-American, pro-slavery, and a rapist” (see embed below where Pat Buchanan makes a fool out of O’Donnell).

Well, first of all, as Newsbusters and Jake Tapper point out, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion, was actually anti-slavery. However, what really cracks me up about O’Donnell’s nutty rant, is that he implied that Romney needed to”answer” for what Joseph Smith said or thought in 1844. However, when Barack Obama gave his famous race speech–which was in response to Reverend Wright’s rants going public–Lawrence O’Donnell was one of the loudest voices on MSNBC praising Obama’s speech. So, let me get this straight. According to Lawrence O’Donnell, Mitt Romney needs to “answer” for what Joseph Smith said back in 1844; however, Barack Obama doesn’t have to answer for his pastor’s very recent racist, anti-American, anti-Semitic rants (see embed below)?! Man, that’s really rich.

Furthermore, as Allahpundit of HotAir points out, Reverend Wright told reporters several days ago that “them Jews aren’t going to let me talk to Obama”. To quote Allahpundit, “Exit question: 20 years spent in the pews of Trinity and who knows how many private conversations had with Wright, and yet not once did Obama ever encounter this sort of rhetoric from the good reverend, huh? Who, mind you, can’t even suppress it when speaking to reporters on the record. Remarkable.” Allahpundit further points out that “at least we now know how Hamas propaganda wound up in the church bulletins“.

Oh, but silly me. It’s Mitt Romney who needs to answer for what Joseph Smith said in 1844–not Barack Obama who needs to answer for what his pastor/mentor of twenty years (who married him and baptized his kids) said in 2004-2009, because, according to Joe Klein, I’m just “spreading the poison” by even bringing this up.

Oh, and speaking of liberal bigotry, here is our old pal Bill Maher again. This time, instead of spewing sexist venom, he’s spewing anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish, anti-Mormon and anti-Christian venom in his documentary “Religulous” (see the embed below). Hey Bill, there’s a word for people who make documentaries that call Muslims, Jews, Mormons and Evangelical Christians “crazy” and mocks their cultures and beliefs–hint: it starts with the letter B and ends with “igot”. Oh, and one more thing. Could any of you imagine what liberals’ reactions would be if a fiery Evangelical minister made a documentary making fun of Muslims, Jews and Mormons and implied that they were “crazy”? Just a thought.

And guess what other famous liberal is not only a sexist, but also a racist–you guessed it Maureen Dowd. During the general election, Ms. Dowd wrote a column called “Mr. Darcy Comes Courting” where she poses the question “Can America get over it’s prejudice and elect the first black president?” Well, I find it quite humorous that Ms. Dowd is so quick to toss out accusations of racism against her fellow Americans when, according to the Gawker, Maureen Dowd thinks that all black people look alike. Not to mention, Ms. Dowd even admitted in a column that she asked her “cute black mailman” (her words, not mine) how he felt about Obama’s win. Furthermore, the Gawker also pointed out that, in the same column where she brags about talking to her “cute black mailman” (and black people in general for the first time), Maureen Dowd also seems to brag about having one black friend, Gwen Ifil. (Hey Maureen–project much?!) I mean, can any of you imagine the reaction that a conservative columnist would have gotten if she wrote a column bragging about talking to black people for the first time and about having a black friend?

Oh, and here’s another example of bigotry brought to you courtesy of Maureen Dowd. Now, in the column “Barbies for War!” (which is probably the snobbiest thing that I’ve ever read in my entire life), Ms. Dowd writes about her trip to Wasilla, AK. In the column, she writes about AK as if she is literally visiting a foreign country and observing the local people’s customs (Dowd also spends half of the column making fun of Sarah Palin‘s church). In “Barbies for War!”, she mentions meeting Betty Necas. In her column, Ms. Dowd mentions that Ms. Necas was a teenage mom, and describes her as a “Wal-mart mom” who “wears sweatpants and has tattoos on her wrists”. OK, let’s play a game. Suppose that a conservative columnist from say The Wall Street Journal or National Review wrote a column about visiting inner city Harlem as if it were a foreign country, mocked the churches there, and described Obama supporters that he came in contact with as wearing tattoos and sweatpants, being overweight, and liking mac and cheese (which is how she described Hillary’s supporters in “Mr. Darcy Comes Courting”)? I’m not a betting woman, but I would bet everything that I own that he would be out of a job the very next day–and rightfully so I might add.

[On a side note, poor Maureen can't seem to catch a break. Not only is she a bigot, but she's also a rather unimaginative plagiarist, so you kinda have to feel sorry for her, but I digress.]

Now, more recent examples of lefty bigotry would be Sonya Sotomayor saying in multiple speeches that being “a wise Latina” gives her “better judgment than a white male” (in the link that I provided, Stuart Taylor hits it out of the park when he states that, “Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.”) and Andrew Sullivan writing in a blog that the Jooooos control The Washington Post and want Obama to fail in Iran so that Isreal can attack Iran (H/T Moe Lane). Seriously Andrew, between your wild conspiracies about Sarah Palin’s baby and your wild conspiracy theories about the Jewish lobby, you are starting to sound like some of the patients that I saw on my Psyche rotation during my third year of medical school. Dude, lose the tinfoil hat and get on some medication ASAP, but I digress.

However, the best example of liberal racism and bigotry that I can think of is Janeane Garofalo. First, she goes on Keith Olbermann’s show and calls all of the Tea Party protesters “a bunch of teabagging, racist redncecks” even though, during the Bush Years, she said that dissent was patriotic and that she was “in favor of any citizen talking if they wanted to” (see embed below).

However, in another segment on Olbermann’s show, Garofalo states that “Black Repulicans suffer from Stockholm Syndrome” (particularly, Michael Steele) and then compares female Republicans to “Eva Braun” (Olbermann laughs along as she spews her bigotry). Yes ladies and gentlemen, you heard her correctly–Ms. Garofalo thinks that all black people should think alike, and if they don’t, then they are mentally ill. There’s a word for that–it starts with the letter R and ends with “acist”. Below is a hilarious video from the Fox News Show Red Eye which calls Garafalo out on her obvious bigotry.

Moreover, Barack Obama, himself, was hardly Mr. Tolerance on the campaign trail. We all remember when he referred to rural Pennsylvanians as “Bitter, gun-clinging, xenophobes” and when he referred to his grandmother as a “typical white person”. Suppose a white southern, conservative male, like say Fred Thompson, referred to someone as a “typical black person” on a radio show–I bet the left would crucify him, but I digress. Oh, and as far as Obama attending reverend Wright’s church for twenty years, I think that Charles Krauthammer in his column “Questions of Character” said it best when he wrote that, ““He doesn’t share Rev. Wright’s poisonous views of race nor Ayers’ views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond”. I also thought that Krauthammer hit it out of the park when he wrote the following–

“Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely.”

So, in conclusion, I think that the liberal philosophy on racism and sexism can be summed up by the following phrase–

Bigotry for me, but not for thee.

Actually, that would be the short version. The long version would be, “I’m a liberal and I voted for Obama….I can never be a racist or a sexist. Therefore, I get to say all of the bigoted crap that I want”. There are several examples of this philosophy put into action. The first one would be when The LA Times published an op-ed titled, “Obama the Magic Negro” and Rush Limbaugh wrote a song mocking the column, and all the liberals called him a racist (I, personally, don’t think the term “magic negro” is very tasteful or politically correct, but I also think that it’s total hypocrisy to say that The LA Times can publish the column, but that Rush Limbaugh is a racist for mocking the column–and for the record, I don’t regularly listen to Rush). Another example of this philosphy is Perez Hilton calling Carrie Prejean a “stupid b*tch” for disagreeing with him on gay marriage (and for the record, I have no problem with gay marriage), but then thinking that he can turn around and call will i am a “f**got” (and having the nerve to be surprised when he got punched out for it). And finally, the George Allen “Macaca” incident comes to mind. Don’t get me wrong, I do not approve of calling anyone “Macaca”–it is rude and boorish and Senator Allen was right to apologize. However, when I first heard the term, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but I knew that it sounded familiar. Well, when I looked it up in my old zoology textbook (I took vertebrate zoology in undergrad in order to get my biology degree and I never traded in that textbook, because I thought that it was cool), I remembered that it was the Genus for for the Maques monkey (in Senator Allen’s defense, I doubt that he knew what it meant, because he doesn’t strike me as someone who moonlights as a closet zoologist–no offense to him).

However, If someone said that I had “a Wal-Mart shopper’s bad hair and big bum”, called me “Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction”, said that I “looked like a slutty flight attendant”, made rape jokes about my daughter, or said that they wanted to “hate-f**k” me, I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have to look any of those things up in a textbook–I’d know exactly what that person meant. Furthermore, when I heard Janeane Garofalo say that “All black Republicans have Stockholm Syndrome”, and when I heard Maureen Down brag about deigning to talk to her “cute black mailman”, or when I heard Lawrence O’Donnell’s anti-Mormon rant, I didn’t have to look any of that up in some textbook–I knew exactly what they were getting at. And finally, when I heard Reverend Wright’s sermons/rants, I knew exactly what he meant (and I’m pretty sure that Obama did too)–yet Senator Allen loses his VA Senate seat for calling some guy “Macaca”, but Barack Obama gets to be president after sitting in a racist, anti-Semitic church for twenty years. Go figure.

[Oh, and none of you lefty lurkers better bring up Jerome Corsi. I wrote a diary where I went out of my way to condemn his "secret Muslim theory" about Obama and I told people not to buy his book. Furthermore, Redstate and The Minority Report banned anyone who even mentioned that Obama was a Muslim or the Antichrist. Unlike liberals, we police our own here and call out bad behavior. And besides, NOBODY mainstream in the Republican party was promoting that.]

So, In conclusion, why do liberals feel entitled to have the philosphy “Bigotry for me, but not for thee?” There are basically three reasons. The first reason is that some of them have become so “personally and ideologically invested in Barack Obama” (to quote Pat Buchanan), that they have literally become Machiavellian and will use any weapon in their arsenal to destroy people who they perceive as Obama’s enemies–and will even resort to sexism and blatant bigotry if they feel that it’s necessary (Chris Matthews, Andrew Sullivan and Jeaneane Garofalo fall into this category). The second group are people who have kind of a medieval mentality. They think that by voting for Obama for president (and by being liberals themselves) that they have bought indulgences in The Church of the Obamamessiah, and so therefore, they can get away with saying any offensive crap that they want, and that because they support St. Barack of Hope, they will automatically get absolution for their sins (this is similar to people who travel in big private jets but buy carbon credits–Maureend Dowd, Bill Maher, and Lawrence O’Donnell fit into this group). Now, the third group simply consists of people who are aware of the MSM’s liberal bias; therefore, they know that they can say whatever they want and they won’t be held to the same standard that a conservative would (Sonya Sotomayor, Perez Hilton, and Guy Cimbalo (the guy who wrote the Hatef**k article) fit into this category).

OK, right now, some liberals who are reading this might be saying to themselves, “You know, Susannah makes some good points. Maybe we should take the plank out of our own eye and start calling out bad behavior on our side when we see it”–however, trust me, these people are in the minority. Most of the trolls that will read and comment on this diary will A.) Personally attack me and Redstate (instead of refuting any of the points that I made) B.) Bring up how “evil” they think Bush and Cheney are C.) Carry on about how they don’t believe in American exceptionalism and how we should be more like Sweden–that’s the whiny, liberal troll trifecta boys and girls. (Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that all liberals are whiny. My mother’s a liberal and she’s certainly not whiny; however, the trolls that we get here sure the hell are).

So, come on all of you trolls out there–channel you’re inner Joy Behar or Keith Olbermann and give me your best shot. Just please try not to be too shrill–we don’t want to hurt any dog’s ears in the nearby vicinity do we? OK–all together now–

“I’m a liberal and I voted for Obama…..I can’t be a sexist or a racist. Therefore, I get a pass to say all of the offensive crap that I want. And besides, Bush is evil and Cheney is Darth Vader, and America sucks and we should bow to and backslap more dictators so other countries will like us more” (pouts and stomps foot).

Oh, and if any of you forgot how to whine and moan, see exhibit A below.

Damn, it’s good to be back–even if just for a little while.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

As most of my regular readers are aware, I wrote a diary last week titled, “Nancy Pelosi Needs to Step Down”. In this diary, I chronicled all of Nancy Pelosi’s ridiculous behavior over the past two years (since she became the Speaker of the House), such as attempting to appoint unqualified corrupt cronies to positions of power over more qualified people, appointing a man to chair the House intelligence committee who doesn’t know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia Muslim, requesting regular military flights for herself, her staff and her lackeys, giving a highly partisan speech that helped to tank the TARP/Bailout bill, and putting all kinds of earmarks and waste in the stimulus/porkulus bill (like giving a 5.2 billion dollar bailout to ACORN), just to name a few. Speaker Pelosi’s absurd behavior seemed to culminate last week with her denials that she knew anything about waterboarding or enhanced interrogation techniques, despite leaked CIA memos that said that she had been briefed about waterboarding in 2002 (H/T Moe Lane of Redstate).

In fact, even Jon Stewart mocked her obvious fabrications last week in the video below (H/T bk of Redstate)–and Stewart RARELY mocks Democrats.

Now, considering the humiliation sandwich that Nancy Pelosi was being force fed last week when I wrote my previous diary (”Nancy Pelosi Needs to Step Down”), I thought surely she had hit rock-bottom and couldn’t possibly sink any lower–however, I was oh so very wrong. A few days after I wrote the above diary, Speaker Pelosi gave her infamous press conference where, throughout the first half, she was utterly incoherent–

Then, in the second half of her press conference, Speaker Pelosi ACTUALLY ACCUSED THE CIA OF LYING TO CONGRESS!

Now, at the risk of our own Caleb Howe (formerly known as absentee) calling me a cliche’, I must say that I, literally, felt embarrassed for her. I mean, I could feel myself squirming in my seat and my cheeks getting warm as I watched that train wreck of a press conference. Furthermore, after watching Speaker Pelosi prevaricate in the above videos, I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for this woman to hit rock-bottom, because she appears to have no sense of shame, but I digress.

And to make matters worse, if she wasn’t already humiliated enough after her infamous press conference, Leon Panetta, the current head of the CIA for the Obama Administration and Bill Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, totally discredited/smacked-down Nancy Pelosi, according to The Washington Post, when he said the following–

“It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress,” Panetta said in a message meant to shore up employees of his agency, which is at the center of a relentless political firestorm over Bush policies and the Iraq war. “Our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of [terrorism suspect] Abu Zubaida, describing the ‘enhanced techniques that had been employed.”

I think that John Dickerson made a really good point in his excellent column (be sure to Digg it) when he stated that, “The reason this new attack on the CIA is such a bold and perhaps very bad idea is that the CIA is very good at these battles”. Furthermore, I think that Dickerson really hit it out of the park in regard to why Pelosi put herself, as well as the Obama Administration, in such a pickle by taking on the CIA in such a ham-fisted fashion when he wrote the following–

The escalating mess is exactly why President Obama didn’t want a thorough look into the question of torture. Fights like these distract from his effort to get politicians to focus on other matters, and the arguments potentially weaken his party by either undermining its high-road position on torture or making leading Democrats look unsteady, as Pelosi looked during her halting and jittery press conference. As one former senior Bush official put it, “Their real political problem [with investigating torture] is when they look back, they will find many of their own there. This sh*t storm will leave everyone stinky. Or might just leave their side in deeper doo-doo for the worst political sin: hypocrisy.”

At some point the president may be asked what his view of the Pelosi matter is. It’s a tricky spot. He doesn’t want to get in the middle of a he said/she said debate. If he defends Pelosi, he alienates the CIA. That relationship is already tender because Obama released Bush-era torture memos against the wishes of the CIA, whose agents participated in the torture. On the other hand, if Obama defends the CIA, he undermines his leader in the House and angers her liberal supporters.

On a side note, Mark Steyn has recently written a fantastic column in which he explains with perfect clarity exactly why Nancy Pelosi is so contemptible with her prevarications about what she did and didn’t know in regard to enhanced interrogation techniques. Steyn points out, in so many words, that Dick Cheney and Nancy Pelosi pretty much have the same views on waterboarding, but that Vice President Cheney has the cojones to man-up and tell people what he really thinks. Furthermore, Dick Cheney has the courage to stick to his convictions–unlike Nancy Pelosi who calls the brave men and women of the CIA “liars”. Mark Steyn further elaborates on these points in two excerpts from his column that I have pasted below. First, Steyn writes the following–

Question: What does Dick Cheney think of waterboarding?

He’s in favor of it. He was in favor of it then, he’s in favor of it now. He doesn’t think it’s torture, and he supports having it on the books as a vital option. On his recent TV appearances, he sometimes gives the impression he would not be entirely averse to performing a demonstration on his interviewers, but generally he believes its use should be a tad more circumscribed. He is entirely consistent.

Question: What does Nancy Pelosi think of waterboarding?

No, I mean really. Away from the cameras, away from the Capitol, in the deepest recesses of her (if she’ll forgive my naïveté) soul. Sitting on a mountaintop, contemplating the distant horizon, chewing thoughtfully on a cranberry-almond granola bar, what does she truly believe about waterboarding?

Does she support it? Well, according to the CIA, she did way back when, over six years ago.

Then, Mark Steyn further states the following about the Pelosi drama–

Alarmed by her erratic public performance, the Speaker’s fellow San Francisco Democrat Dianne Feinstein attempted to put an end to Nancy’s self-torture session. “I don’t want to make an apology for anybody,” said Senator Feinstein, “but in 2002, it wasn’t 2006, ‘07, ‘08 or ‘09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks.”

Indeed. In effect, the senator is saying waterboarding was acceptable in 2002, but not by 2009. The waterboarding didn’t change, but the country did. It was no longer America’s war but Bush’s war. And it was no longer a bipartisan interrogation technique that enjoyed the explicit approval of both parties’ leaderships, but a grubby Bush-Cheney-Rummy war crime.

Dianne Feinstein has provided the least worst explanation for her colleague’s behavior. The alternative – that Speaker Pelosi is a contemptible opportunist hack playing the cheapest but most destructive kind of politics with key elements of national security – is, of course, unthinkable. Senator Feinstein says airily that no reasonable person would hold dear Nancy to account for what she supported all those years ago. But it’s OK to hold Cheney or some no-name Justice Department backroom boy to account?

Well, sure. It’s the Miss USA standard of political integrity: Carrie Prejean and Barack Obama have the same publicly stated views on gay marriage. But the politically correct enforcers know that Barack doesn’t mean it, so that’s okay, whereas Carrie does, so that’s a hate crime. In the torture debate, Pelosi is Obama and Dick Cheney is Carrie Prejean. Dick means it, because to him this is an issue of national security. Nancy doesn’t, because to her it’s about the shifting breezes of political viability.

[By the way, if any of you are interested, Jennifer Rubin has recently written an awesome blog where she points out how the Obama Administration and their lackeys in the MSM never saw Dick Cheney coming when he was touring the Sunday talk show circuit a couple of weeks ago. They were so obsessed with Cheney's unpopularity and President Obama's charisma, that they forgot one very important point--that Cheney had the truth on his side. Here is an excerpt from Rubin's blog that really says it all--

In this obsession over Cheney’s unpopularity the mainstream media and the Obama administration share a common and debilitating fault: an preoccupation with personality and polling data. It makes not one wit of difference that someone not running for office has a current popularity rating of 20% — if what he is saying is deadly accurate and central to a key policy debate. The media and the administration somehow believed Cheney was irrelevant because they, not he, are hung up on irrelevant data points and are largely immune to arguments on the merits.

The media is obsessed with who the “leader” of the minority party is and who the “frontrunner for 2012? is. How bizarrely out of touch are they? Well, no more so than the Obama team which spent weeks tying the GOP to Rush Limbaugh while they created a disastrous stimulus package and frittered away a trillion dollars.

The administration and the media jointly overlooked the power of Cheney’s message which was based on a set of facts over which he has complete mastery (and which they were either indifferent to or ignorant of). So they now sit slack-jawed while Cheney has largely pinned the Obama team to the mat.]

So, in conclusion, not only is Nancy Pelosi officially a laughing stock (even in Democratic circles), but she’s also an untrustworthy prevaricator (and that’s putting it nicely–”liar” would be more accurate) who refuses to take responsibility for her mistakes–instead she pathetically and desperately tries to pass the buck to our brave men and women in the CIA. I almost feel sorry for her. (ALMOST being the operative word. Anyway, my Dad always says that it’s hard to take pleasure in watching people self-destruct or get what they deserve.) However, not only is Nancy Pelosi an untrustworthy hypocrite, she’s also a loose cannon who should not be in a position that gives her such power and influence over our national security–especially since the CIA doesn’t have any confidence in her.

In closing, I will leave you with a poem by Mike Huckabee that says all that needs to be said about why Nancy Pelosi needs to resign as Speaker of the House–it is funny, it is concise and it echoes my sentiments exactly. I hope that for the good of our national security, Nancy Pelosi will heed his advice. Take it away Governor!

Click here for Fox News Mike Huckabee video.

Update: Steve Foley of The Minority Report has just put up an excellent column with a video in it of Nancy Pelosi’s latest press conference. In her press conference, Speaker Pelosi not only refuses to recant her statement about the CIA lying (or apologize to the CIA), but she also refuses to even take any more questions regarding the matter. Unbelievable.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

Surprise, surprise. Nancy Pelosi was for enhanced interrogation techniques before she was against them. This damning coverage by Fox News (hat tip to Redstate’s Moe Lane who wrote about this in an excellent column) reports that the CIA claims that Pelosi was briefed in 2002 about waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques, which directly contradicts her previous story where she claims that she was not told about the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques on suspected Al Qaeda terrorists.

I think that Charles Krauthammer hit it out of the park, in regard to Pelosi’s behavior, in his recent column titled, “Pelosi: Utterly Contemptible”, when he stated the following–

Today Pelosi protests “we were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.” She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.

On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what’s done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA’s rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do “in the future.”

But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying “Don’t do it.”

On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House intelligence committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, “on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.”

More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now “on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009″ (the words are Blair’s) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.

Now, the funny thing is that I could actually forgive Nancy Pelosi this one factual inaccuracy (OK–outright lie) if this was her first brush with idiotic and untrustworthy behavior–but, unfortunately for the country, it’s not.

Remember during the whole TARP/Bailout bill fiasco when Pelosi gave that God-awful partisan speech–which gave cover to both Republicans and Democrats (who were already skeptical of the bill) to vote against it? (The embed is below). In this ridiculous turkey of a speech, Mrs. Pelosi actually has the unmitigated gall to make a fuss over seven hundred billion dollars (even though Obama’s porkulus/stimulus bill, that Pelosi subsequently helped write, will eventually cost the taxpayers over a trillion dollars). Furthermore, Nancy Pelosi also states, in the first two minutes of the video, that “the golden parachute and the government bailing you out–those days are over”. Well, again, Mrs. Pelosi was being disingenuous to say the least (OK–again, she was lying), because in the recent stimulus/porkulus bill, ACORN was given a 5.2 billion dollar bailout. Yeah, that ACORN who is under investigation by the FBI for voter fraud in thirteen different states. Oh, and who could forget about the recent AIG bonus debacle as covered by Dan Spencer or Obama’s recent bailout of the auto industries that even some Democrats opposed, but I digress. (I guess the days of government bailouts aren’t over yet, are they?)

Now, whether you were for or against the TARP/Bailout bill is neither here nor there. My point is that in another speech (which went viral under the title, “Nancy Pelosi: Dumber than Soap”–the embeded is below), Pelosi claimed that if we didn’t pass President Obama’s stimulus/porkulus bill IMMEDIATELY, that “five hundred million Americans would lose their jobs” (where she got that figure from, I don’t know–I don’t think that anyone knows). Anyway, my point is that Nancy Pelosi thought that it was urgent to pass the Obama stimulus package immediately in order to prevent millions of Americans from losing their jobs, and yet, she was willing to play partisan politics with the TARP bill which, to paraphrase Daniel Henninger of the WSJ, caused “the terrified stock market” to crater “wiping out individual voter wealth” when it fell apart? To quote Charles Krauthammer, that is “utterly contemptible”.

Now, I bet you are asking yourselves right now, “Can Nancy Pelosi’s tom-foolery, hypocrisy, disingenuousness, and out-right idiocy get any worse?” Well, I’m here to answer your question ladies and gentlemen–yes it can. Back in 2006 when Pelosi first became Speaker of the House she requested “regular military flights not only for herself and her staff, but also for relatives and for other members of the California delegation.” Now, it should be noted that the Bush Administration’s Department of Defense offered Pelosi the same plane to fly in that Dennis Hastert used when he was Speaker of the House, but Pelosi declined to use it because “She found it was not big enough for staff, supporters and other members.” However, in August in 2008, when asked why she was against offshore oil drilling, even though gas prices were going through the roof at the time, Pelosi replied by stating that, “I’m trying to save the planet”. OK–let me get this straight. Nancy Pelosi is “trying save the planet” by regularly flying herself and her posse across the country (creating a carbon foot-print the size of a Sasquatch’s), but we poor plebiscites are supposed to suck it up and pay $4.00 a gallon for gas, because she has a problem with offshore drilling. Man, that’s really rich. It kind of reminds me of President Obama telling us to turn down our thermostats while he cranks his up, but I digress.

However, if anyone was really interested in getting a clear view into both Nancy Pelosi’s character and competency, one only needed to look at who she initially tried to appoint to be the House Majority Leader, as well as who she eventually appointed to be be the head of the House Intelligence Committee, back in 2006 when she first became the Speaker of the House. In 2006 when the Democrats first took back the House and the Senate, the very liberal LA Times wrote a scathing op-ed about Nancy Pelosi titled, “Don’t Snub Harman”. Below is an excerpt from the column–

NEWLY MINTED House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is off to a rocky start. On the same day she was formally elected to lead the new Democratic majority, party colleagues refused to endorse her bizarre choice of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who was investigated but not charged in the Abscam scandal more than two decades ago, as her second-in-command.

That embarrassing experience should induce Pelosi (D-San Francisco) — who appeared chastened before reporters Thursday — to reconsider another ill-advised promotion: Her apparent intention to bestow the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee not on the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), but on Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.).

Hastings, like Murtha, seems an unlikely choice for a leadership role in what Pelosi has been advertising as “the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history.” Hastings was impeached as a federal judge and removed from office in the late 1980s (although he was acquitted of bribery in a criminal trial in 1983).

A litany of explanations have been adduced to explain why Pelosi would bypass Harman, an expert on intelligence matters who has won the respect of both parties while criticizing some of the Bush administration’s excesses in the war on terror. None of them is persuasive. Harman has earned this chairmanship.

But, what this op-ed doesn’t mention is WHO exactly Nancy Pelosi wound up picking to head the House Intelligence committee. After Pelosi found herself the butt of much ridicule due to her “bizarre” and ethically challenged choices after hammering Republicans for having a “culture of corruption”, she settled on Sylvester Reyes (D-TX) to head the House Intelligence Committee–a man who did not know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia Muslim. Furthermore, when Reyes was pressed to answer if he knew anything at all about Hezbollah (the Shia Iranian terrorist group), Reyes responded by using the Sammy Sosa Defense (i.e., the “No habla Ingles”/”I speak no English” defense). I’m not kidding. This is the man that Nancy Pelosi put in charge of the House Intelligence Committee–think about that for a second. It clearly demonstrates just how seriously she takes our national security.

Now, I realize that Harman is embroiled in a semi-scandal of her own having to do with the Israeli Public Affairs Committee (although, the LA Times has an interesting column saying that the Harman scandal is really just some members of the Obama Administration’s Justice Department engaging in CYA–you can be the judge); however, I would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that Jane Harman knows the difference between a Sunni and a Shia, and that she wouldn’t use the “Sammy Sosa Defense” if she didn’t know the answer to a question.

But, what I find the most troubling is something that I read from a liberal blog called The Reaction. In their column, they basically admit that (and I’m paraphrasing) “Harman was backed by the Blue Dog Coalition”….”she is respected by her colleagues on both sides of the isle”….”Pelosi didn’t consider Harman partisan enough and thought that she has not been a tough enough critic of the Bush Administration”…..they quote and cite Robert Novak as saying that “Pelosi’s judgment might be distorted by personal considerations”…..and finally that “Pelosi needs to look beyond herself to the good of the country”. If this is true, then to me it is “utterly contemptible” that Nancy Pelosi would jeopardize our national security–by appointing a man to head the House Intelligence Committee who doesn’t know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia–simply because she’s involved in some kind of p*ssing contest with Jane Harman. Not to mention, it’s also pathetic, immature, catty and embarrassing, but I digress.

So, in conclusion, I feel that it’s time to bring the Nancy Pelosi circus to an end. Yes, she had an amusing run there for a time, all the while providing great fodder for pundits and bloggers everywhere, but enough is enough. The national security of the country is at stake and this woman is at best a half-wit and a hypocrite, and at worst, she’s a slightly unbalanced liar. By the way, this is not an easy diary for me to write. I never agreed with Nancy Pelosi’s politics, but I was proud when the first woman was made Speaker of the House and I didn’t want her to turn out to be a laughing stock. (I’m sorry, but that’s how I felt–write it down, take a picture, sue me, whatever. Oh, and for any of you lefty lurkers out there who don’t believe that Pelosi’s a laughing stock, check out the SNL video that I embedded below mocking her–and SNL is a predominantly liberal organization). However, my country comes first and I can no longer trust this woman–who has by all means proven herself to be “utterly contemptible”–with our national security for another second. It is time for the circus to hit the road. Nancy Pelosi needs to go–now!

Update: Today, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has written an excellent column (citing The Washington Post) which provides further evidence that Nancy Pelosi lied about her knowledge of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques that were being used on high level Al Qaeda terrorists.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

As most of my regular readers are aware, I recently wrote a diary about President Obama’s Apologolooza/America sucks tour throughout Europe and at the G-20 Summit titled, “Mr. President, Do You Believe In American Exceptionalism?”. (Actually, it was his second Apologolooza world tour–we all remember the famous Berlin trip last summer during the general election where Obama apologized for America to the Germans, right?) Well, I completed my diary before President Obama embarked on his third Apologolooza/America sucks tour throughout Latin America, where he even wrote an op-ed apologizing to the Mexican government. I think I’ll call it Apologolooza part III–the Latin American Adventure. (If Obama’s not careful he’s gonna run out of continents to bring his show to. I wonder if Apologolooza part IV will be take place in Africa or Asia, but I digress). Anyway, please consider this diary an addendum to the previous diary that I recently wrote.

Now below, I have embedded a video of Jake Tapper’s coverage of President Obama’s Apologolooza part III tour throughout Latin America. First, Tapper begins by explaining the “Obama Doctrine”, and one of the things that he quotes President Obama as saying is that “We need to confess when we don’t live up to our ideals” (translation–”We need to apologize and flagellate ourselves a little more”).

Next, Jake Tapper ironically shows a clip of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (hardly a right-wing bomb thrower), in 2007, when she was running for president. In the clip, Clinton stated that we don’t want to meet with dictators without preconditions because “We don’t want to see the power and the prestige of the US Presidency put at risk by rushing into meetings with Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad”. Well, it’s really too bad that President Obama didn’t heed her warning, because after his handshake/backslap with Hugo Chavez (what–no bow? Chavez got shafted), his allowing Chavez to humiliate him by giving him an anti-American book in front of a gathering of cameras and world leaders (that Jake Tapper writes about in his blog), and his sitting there for an entire fifty-two minutes while Daniel Ortega, the dictator of Nicaragua, trashed the United States (oh, and the socialist Bolivian president accused the US of trying to assassinate him), President Obama did a whole lot more than just put “the power and the prestige of the US Presidency at risk”–he pretty much let these third world tyrants give the middle finger to our “prestige”, but I digress. Now, of course, President Obama stated that he was just trying to be “courteous”; however, I thought that Nevada Senator John Ensign hit it out of the park when he said that it was “irresponsible for President Obama to be seen laughing and joking around with” a tyrant like Hugo Chavez.

Oh, but I almost forgot. Jake Tapper did have a ray of sunlight to shed on President Obama’s Latin American Apologolooza/America sucks world tour. Tapper reported President Obama stating that, “We are making progress”, because Raul Castro is “willing to discuss human rights and political prisoners”. (Yes, Raul Castro is such a benevolent leader and a trustworthy man, that I’m sure that we can count on him to keep his word because he told Obama that he would).

And finally, in the end of the video, Jake Tapper explains that President Obama didn’t understand the full gravity of the insult that Hugo Chavez was throwing his way by giving him the anti-American book (titled, “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”) in front of an audience and TV cameras, because “President Obama doesn’t speak Spanish”. Well, I just got a big belly laugh out of that one, because wasn’t it Obama who said last summer that “we should teach our children Spanish and be embarrassed that we don’t know French”? That’s some irony for you there boys and girls.

Click here for Jake Tapper ABC video.

Now, the previous video of Jake Tapper’s reporting on Apologolooza III was really just the appetizer–the main course is coming up next. Below, I have pasted a link to a Fox News Mobile video with Megyn Kelly. In this video, Kelly interviews Doug Schoen, a former Democratic pollster for President Clinton (again, hardly a right-wing bomb thrower), who was there to discuss his new book on Hugo Chavez titled, “The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the Threat Against America”. In this interview, Schoen points out that, “We should have been in touch with the Venezuelans to make it clear that it’s not acceptable, without preconditions, for the two leaders to embrace”.

Next, Megyn Kelly shows footage of Hugo Chavez, in a 2006 speech at the U.N., buffoonishly calling President Bush “the Devil” and stating that he “could still smell the sulfur”. Kelly then goes on to quote Hugo Chavez as stating, one day after 9/11, that “the US brought the attacks on itself”. Doug Schoen responded to her by saying that, “You really can’t excuse this kind of behavior, as well as the drug trafficking, the support of Iranian nuclear ambitions, the support of Hamas, and the massive limitations on political freedom in Venezuela”. I tend to agree with Schoen–especially since Iran is killing American soldiers. Then, Schoen further adds that Hugo Chavez has never renounced, nor recanted, any of his offensive statements regarding the US.

Towards the end of the interview, Megyn Kelly asks Doug Schoen if “Obama is in fantasyland” thinking that he can change how these dictators, like Chavez, operate. Schoen responds by stating that, “If Obama can not get Chavez to make conscious changes in his policies, then he is in fantasyland, because hugs, exchanges of handshakes and exchanges of books don’t do anything other than support Chavez at home and help him to implement policies that undermine freedom and democracy in Venezuela”.

However, the best part of this Fox News footage came in the very beginning of this video. I’m just mentioning it now, because I believe in saving the best for last (you know, go out with a bang). In the first fifteen seconds of this interview (watch these first fifteen seconds carefully), you can see Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary and Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser, sitting behind Obama and to the immediate left of him (but to the viewer’s right) when Hugo Chavez gregariously comes up to President Obama to hand him the infamous book in front of the throngs of reporters. As you watch this video, one cannot help but notice the look of intense disgust on Larry Summers’ face as Chavez sticks it to President Obama by handing him the anti-American book in front of the media. Furthermore, as Obama just humbly smiles and accepts the book, you can see Summers roll his eyes and toss his head in complete and utter revulsion that our president would allow some tin-pot dictator to make him look like a weak-kneed pansy in front of the whole world.

Click here for Fox News Megyn Kelly video.

I just have one question after viewing this–AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO NOTICED THIS FOOTAGE OF LARRY SUMMERS’ FACE?! I find it extremely hard to believe that someone, somewhere, in the the MSM didn’t notice this as well. Oh, who am I kidding. I’m sure that some of them noticed it, they just chose not to report on it (you know, you can’t make The One look bad), but I digress.

So, in conclusion, I could probably write a one thousand page thesis on why President Obama should have manned up and knocked off the whole Apologolooza world tour that he’s got going on–but hey, more is not always better–sometimes it’s just more. No, I think that in this particular case, I will let Larry Summers’ face do the talking for me. Come to think of it, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

Promoted by Caleb … Why aren’t Sheehan and the like called extremists for protesting but veterans are? GOOD QUESTION!

It’s really too bad that the media won’t cover this video from Midnight Blue.

But hey, it’s probably for the best with him being a “right-wing extremist” (translation-veteran) and all, right?

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

OK, I’m sure that most of you are familiar with President Obama’s bow to the King of Saudi Arabia (a country where women are second class citizens and where it is legal to stone them to death). I have embedded a video below from Hot Air titled, “A Tale of Two Bows”. This video clearly demonstrates President Obama giving a much more deep and respectful bow to the King of Saudi Arabia (a nation that funds terror) than to the Queen of England (England is one of our biggest allies).

When I first saw the above video, I thought that it was interesting simply because the whole bow faux paus could possibly have demonstrated that Obama was an inexperienced neophyte who was unaware of what was and what was not proper protocol. I thought that Ed Morrisey of Hot Air hit the nail on the head perfectly when he said that, “Heads of State do not bow to other heads of state” (he pointed out that King Abdullah didn‘t bow back), and further wrote that “It’s the act of a rank amateur, a man unprepared to represent a nation as a head of state.” Furthermore, the whole inexperience theory fit perfectly with Obama giving tacky gifts and being inhospitable to Gordon Brown, as well as with him embarrassing himself by giving back the bust of Churchill to the Brits.

However, I began to re-think my initial “inexperienced neophyte theory”, in regard to President Obama’s bow to the Saudi King, when I read the op-ed in The Chicago Sun Times titled, “US Should Bow to No One, Not Even a King”. In particular, this sentence in the op-ed– “What could give this issue legs is that it conforms to the view of his critics that the President spent too much time on his European tour seeming to apologize for America”.

Then, when I read Charles Krauthammer’s recent column titled, “It’s Your Country Too, Mr. President”, it really got me thinking about my previous stance on President Obama‘s bow to King Abdullah. In the first few paragraphs of the column, Mr. Krauthammer writes the following:

“In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama took note of North Korea’s missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:

“Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response.”

A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What “strong international response” did Obama muster to North Korea’s brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 –”binding,” as it were — U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?

The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express “concern,” let alone condemnation.”

Then, in the last half of his column, Mr. Krauthammer wrote–

“I’m not against gift-giving in international relations. But it would be nice to see some reciprocity. Obama was in a giving mood throughout Europe. While Gordon Brown was trying to make his American DVDs work and the queen was rocking to her new iPod, the rest of Europe was enjoying a more fulsome Obama gift.

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he’ll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they’re not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?

When Austria is mocking you, you’re having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by “just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy.” And then added: “But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.”

It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country’s decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.”

Now, when reading Mr. Krauthammer’s excellent column, I couldn’t help but be reminded that this wasn’t President Obama’s first Apologolooza/America sucks world tour. In fact, Mr. Obama’s first America Sucks world tour took place last summer, during the 2008 Presidential election, when he apologized for America to the Germans during his famous Berlin speech. In an op-ed last summer, Newsmax perfectly articulated my feelings about Obama’s Berlin speech when they said–

“And then there was his speech, in which he proudly proclaimed he was in Germany as a “a fellow citizen of the world.”

And there was the spectacle of the presidential wannabe going to a foreign land to apologize about the United States. Obama told his German audience he was sorry about his country because “I know my country has not perfected itself.” [This comment was made in the former seat of Nazi power. A letter to editor published in Obama’s hometown Chicago Tribune noted the irony: “While America may not be perfect, there is no reason to apologize to the Germans, architects of the Holocaust.”]

As for America’s role in saving Germany from the onslaught of Stalinist communism and the subsequent Cold War, there was nothing.”

Now, since Mr. Krauthammer had gotten my mind traveling down the memory lane of the 2008 election, I was automatically reminded of Barack Obama’s infamous ”Bitter Comments” (where he referred to his fellow Americans as bitter, gun-clinging, xenophobes), and of his anti-American friends such as Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t, for one second, think that President Obama ever agreed with either Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers in how he views America (Barack Obama is an intelligent, educated man. It is ridiculous to think that he ever thought that the US government invented the AIDS virus to kill black people). However, I do think that Charles Krauthammer, again, summed it up perfectly, in another column that he wrote last October titled, ”Questions of Character” when he stated in regard to Obama, that, “He doesn’t share Rev. Wright’s poisonous views of race nor Ayers’ views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond”. Furthermore, I thought that Krauthammer made an excellent point in that same column when he said the following–

“Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely.”

So now, please allow me to put the previous op-eds and columns that I have cited into an even clearer perspective. Could any of you imagine John McCain behaving in the same manner that President Obama has in regard to his rhetoric about America or his associations? I mean, I think that John McCain would rather cut off his left, uh, arm than to apologize for America to the Germans or sit, for one second, in a church where the pastor says, “God damn America”. Furthermore, I think that Cindy McCain would rather cut off her right arm than to say, on national television that, ”For the first time in my adult life, I’m really proud of my country”, but I digress.

On a side note, this whole discussion reminds me of an interesting column written by Joel Stein titled, “Republicans are Blinded by Love”. (Just so you know, Joel Stein is an avowed Obama supporter who wrote about his Obama love in a hilarious column titled, “He’s Got Obamaphilia” where he stated, “I want the man to hope all over me”.) Now, in his column “Republicans are Blinded by Love”, Stein goes so far as to admit that conservatives love America more than liberals do. I have taken the liberty of pasting the most revealing and interesting parts of Stein’s column below.–

“But I’ve come to believe conservatives are right. They do love America more. Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn’t love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I’m more in “like” with my country.”

“Conservatives feel personally blessed to have been born in the only country worth living in. I, on the other hand, just feel lucky to have grown up in a wealthy democracy. If it had been Australia, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Israel or one of those Scandinavian countries with more relaxed attitudes toward sex, that would have been fine with me too.”

“When a Democrat loses the presidential race, real lefties talk a lot about moving to Canada. When Republicans lose, they don’t do that. Though, to be fair, they don’t have a lot of nearby conservative options. Not even Hannity is a committed enough conservative to yell, “If Obama wins, I’m moving to Singapore.”

“I asked Beck why Democrats rarely share his overwhelming sense of American exceptionalism and Francophobia. “I think it’s because in the late 1800s up until the 1930s, the progressive movement started to think the European ideals are pretty good, that it’s one big world,” he said. “Well, it’s not. If you look at all the countries like people, there are differences between people. And I happen to like this person the best.” When I look at the countries like people, I love Sweden the best.”

“I’ll never experience the joy of Hannity-level patriotism. I’m the type who always wonders if some other idea or place or system is better and I’m missing out. And, as I figured out shortly after meeting my wife, that is no way to love.”

OK–I can hear it now from all of my liberal friends that I know from graduate and medical school (who I love deeply by the way). They would all probably say, “Susannah, so what if President Obama thinks like Joel Stein in that he’s “in like with America”, but isn’t head over heels in love with America? So what if Obama might think that Sweden’s a better deal and thinks of himself as more of a “citizen of the world” rather than as just an American (which could help explain the bow to the Saudi king)? As long as he’s competent, and as long as he’s not un-patriotic like Reverend Wright (which he’s not), then why does it matter if he, like Joel Stein, doesn’t necessarily believe in American exceptionalism?” Alright, that’s a fair question that deserves a fair answer. And, up until last Friday night, when I happened to catch Ron Howard’s appearance on Bill Maher’s show, it’s a question that I probably couldn’t have articulated a really good answer for. However, after watching Bill Maher interview Ron Howard, I feel that I can clearly explain why it is so important for an American president to believe in American exceptionalism.

I have embedded two videos of Bill Maher’s interview with Ron Howard below. In the first video, during the first four minutes, Ron Howard discusses making a video for the website “Funny or Die” endorsing Barack Obama (don’t watch anymore than the first four minutes of the video unless you feel that you deserve to be punished for something, because it is boooring). During the second video, between minutes 3:05 to 5:30 (I wouldn‘t advise watching anything before or after that time slot, because again, the rest of the interview is pretty dull), Bill Maher asks Ron Howard the question, “What do you think the future of America is”? and then adds that “Some think that America has jumped the shark”. Mr. Howard responds by saying that, “There needs to be an adjustment”….“I’ve spent time in Europe” (my eyes started uncontrollably rolling when he said that)…. “We won’t be consumed with being the pre-eminent super power driven by militarism and the need to export democracy” (OK–my eyes are stuck in my head from rolling them at this point. What does Ron Howard think that we should export instead of democracy–socialism or communism?)….“There will be other countries that will be economically dominant”….and finally that “We won’t be the same America as we were in the 1950’s”. And, during Ron Howard’s diatribe, Bill Maher interjected that “We won’t be so bloated and greedy”.

Now, while listening to Mr. Howard and Mr. Maher expound on their philosophy of American unexceptionalism, I had what therapists call “a moment of clarity”. If America is no longer the “preeminent super power”, then who steps in to fill the void? Well, I hate to disappoint our lefty lurkers, but it’s not going to be the Canadians, the Swedes, or those cute little dancing Belgians. It will most probably be the communist Chinese and some petro-states like the Iranians, the Saudis, the Russians, and the Venezuelans. Hey, do any of you lefty lurkers want to take part in that social experiment where the Americans are “no longer economically dominant” and we let the Chinese and the petro-states become the preeminent super powers? Anybody, anybody? What, no takers? By the way, do any of you all remember reading in some history book, somewhere, what happened when we let the Germans and the Japanese become the pre-imminent super powers during the late 1930’s? It wasn’t pretty. Furthermore, aren’t we all glad that Ronald Reagan believed in American exceptionalism and didn’t let the Russians become the pre-imminent super power during the 1980’s? Just a thought.

On another side note, Nicole Wallace wrote an excellent column for The Daily Beast last weekend titled, “Why is Obama Apologizing for America?”. In the very first line of the column, Ms. Wallace writes, “Europeans aren’t better than Americans–so I can’t figure out why our president is saying sorry to them instead of explaining what makes our country great”.

Ms. Wallace then goes on to tell a story about how a German tourist slugged her dog while she was jogging in Central Park, simply because the dog greeted him with too much exuberance. When Ms. Wallace told the tourist that, “We don’t hit animals in this country”, she reported that he replied to her by sneering, “I am German. I am lawyer”. Then, after the police arrived (naturally she called the cops, as would I if some bozo punched my dog), Ms. Wallace explained that the police reported to her that, as far as European tourists slugging dogs goes, “It happens a lot” (oh, and I thought that they were supposed to be so much more sophisticated than us).

Moreover, in the next few paragraphs of her column, Ms. Wallace explains beautifully why a strong belief in American exceptionalism is not some silly little wedge issue, but a serious philosophical difference between liberals and conservatives–just like a belief in low taxes and a belief in a strong national defense are both big philosophical differences that conservatives have with liberals. I have pasted below Ms. Wallace’s outstanding summary of how conservatives view American exceptionalism and why it is important to us.

“Republicans have paid close attention to clues this week about Obama’s working definition of American exceptionalism. This examination does not mean we suspect he is anti-American, as some on the left have suggested. Waking up to news Tuesday that he’d visited our brave troops in Iraq before returning to Washington, D.C., I am quite certain, as I was Monday and the day before that, that Barack Obama loves his country.

But his definition of American exceptionalism differs from that of most Republicans. At just about every stop on his weeklong tour, Obama missed opportunities to remind audiences of America’s generosity and compassion by emphasizing our shortcomings and failures. He is wildly popular overseas (and at home), but instead of spending some of his abundant personal and political capital to deliver a clear and direct message that promoted and defended American values, he muddied the message by emphasizing occasions in which America had been “arrogant, dismissive, and derisive” toward Europe.

Liberals found it refreshing. Conservatives found it offensive. The way we see ourselves as Americans and the role of America in the world today is one of the greatest philosophical divides in this country.”

However, it was the final two paragraphs of her column where I felt that Ms. Wallace really hit it out of the park when she wrote the following:

“For my part, I would have been inspired if Obama had re-enacted my favorite scene from the movie Love Actually. Hugh Grant, who plays the British prime minister, leaves meetings with Billy Bob Thornton, who plays the U.S. president, and stands up for his country.

Obama could have said to the Europeans: “We may be a young country, but we are a great country. We are not perfect. We make mistakes. But a whole lot of good has happened at the hands of generous and brave Americans over the last eight years. We have saved countless lives on the continent of Africa from senseless deaths by fighting AIDS and malaria. Despite ongoing challenges, a vibrant democracy is growing in Iraq. Women and girls have returned to school in Afghanistan. America has prevented further attacks at home and abroad. Yes, we face challenges. Our economy is in crisis, and America will do her part, but you must do yours. The threat of terrorism is dire. The fight in Afghanistan is at a crucial juncture. We need you to send troops to fight alongside our brave men and women. It is the only way to ensure that we will all be safe and free.”

Instead, he apologized. Oh, well. There’s always next time.”

Now, for those of you who haven’t seen the movie “Love Actually”, I have taken the liberty of embedding below the exact scene that Ms. Wallace is referring to in her column (the scene where Hugh Grant, as the Prime Minister of England, stands up for his country. By the way, see this movie if you haven‘t–it rocks).

Now, imagine President Obama channeling Hugh Grant and giving that same kind of speech to the UN (in regard to sanctions against North Korea) and to the Europeans (using Ms. Wallace’s script of course) when asking NATO for more troops in Afghanistan and asking the Europeans to take in more prisoners from Guantanamo–and had explained to the Europeans how we’ve been keeping them safe against Al Qaeda and how they need to pitch in and do their fair share. That would have kicked some ass now wouldn’t it?

So, in conclusion, I want to make it clear, again, that I am not remotely worried that President Obama might agree with Reverend Wright–that is ridiculous. However, I am worried that Barack Obama might agree with Joel Stein or Ron Howard in that he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism–and judging from some of his past rhetoric about America and his recent apologies for America, that is a distinct possibility.

Now, it is fine with me if Joel Stein doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism–that is his right as an American. I will still read his columns–heck, they’re funny. Besides, I think that part of what makes America great is that a columnist can write a humorous column about how he thinks that Sweden might be a better deal, and nothing bad will happen to him (imagine trying that in China, Cuba, Russia, or North Korea). And, I really couldn’t care less if Ron Howard believes in American exceptionalism. I will still go see his movies–heck, they are good (I loved “A Beautiful Mind” and “Apollo 13”). I don’t have to agree with everything that Ron Howard says or thinks in order to enjoy his movies. Mr. Howard seems like a nice guy, and it’s not like he is engaging in deliberate anti-American activity like Sean Penn is.

However, as far as my president goes, well that’s a whole nother ball of wax. I don’t want my president to just be “in like” with his country, but think that wearing a flag pin or putting your hand over your heart during the Nation Anthem are out-dated traditions that only rural, bitter gun-clingers take part in. I want my president to be a loud and proud, flag-waving patriot who bleeds red, white, and blue. Why? Because the president is the marketer/salesman-in-chief of America, and it’s a lot harder to sell a product that you don’t believe in deeply. (I really shouldn‘t have to explain this to anyone–this should be common sense. For instance, imagine if the president of The Westminster Kennel club was “in like“ with dogs and thought that they were OK, but thought that cats might make better pets–he probably wouldn‘t promote The Westminster Kennel Club as much as someone who thinks that dogs rule, but I digress.) Maybe, if President Obama had channeled more Hugh Grant in “Love Actually” and less Ron Howard and Bill Maher on his last trip to Europe, he would have gotten the Europeans and the UN to give him more of what he wanted. And besides, to quote Emma Thompson’s character in “Love Actually”, “People hate sissies”. In other words, if you are perpetually apologizing for your very existence (or in Obama’s case, for America’s very existence), then people will simply lose respect for you.

So now, due to my prior experiences conversing with all kinds of people, I have come to the conclusion that there are pretty much two kinds of Americans. The first group will watch the patriotic video below (with the hot soldiers in it) and their eyes will get a little misty, they might get a lump in their throat, and will feel an overwhelming sense of pride (whether they are Democrat or Republican). The second group will watch the same video, but might think that it’s a little cheesy and embarrassing, and will think that maybe we should be more like Sweden and “make adjustments” like spreading the wealth around, and turning down our thermostats (except for Obama), and that we should be embarrassed that more of our children don’t speak Spanish and that we don‘t speak French. I, because of my political philosophy, really want my president to fall into the former, rather than the latter category.

I think that Michael Goodwin said it best in his recent column when he wrote that, “One early result of Obama’s Kumbaya approach remains the nagging question about his bottom line. Will he act in America’s best interest, even if no one follows? His non-answer to the question of whether he believes in American exceptionalism reveals an unformed mind on the fundamental issue”. Therefore, in conclusion, I don’t think that I am playing “the tired old politics of the past” if I ask my president in a very respectful tone, “Sir, do you believe in American exceptionalism”? It’s really a simple yes or no question. And, I think that as a voter, and as a proud American citizen, that I deserve an honest answer.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

I literally cannot watch this video without feeling a huge smile spread across my face. Maybe it’s the wonderful song from “The Sound of Music” playing that brings back fond memories from childhood. Maybe it’s the way a few people dancing inspires the surrounding community in the Belgian train station to temporarily forget their troubles and join along in the fun. Who knows. Enjoy and, for a moment, smile and forget your cares.

Oh, one more thing. This video has reminded me of the importance of smiling at people and of being kind to strangers–after all, there are more things in life that bring us together than there are things that separate us.

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.