At a news conference yesterday (6/23), President Barack Hussein Obama condemned the "threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days," but stopped short of criticizing the stolen election that sent more than a million protesters into the streets, or expressing support for those protesters. The president's limited criticism of the Iranian regime took place a week after the leaders of Canada, France and Germany issued stronger ones.  It was prompted, said Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times, by Sen. John McCain's "angry Senate speech Monday" (6/22) which made it politically difficult for Mr. Obama to continue to sit on the fence. But in the question session which followed his prepared remarks, the president indicated there is no amount of blood the regime can shed that will dissuade him from negotiating with it. This reached macabre proportions when Mr. Obama indicated his invitation to Iranian diplomats to attend Fourth of July parties is still open.  There are arguments for negotiating with brutal regimes.  But to socialize with the butchers while they are killing their own people is obscene.

Tomorrow's the day, folks.  Crunch time in Tehran.  You know what happened today:  head mullah Ali Khamenei delivered the Friday sermon everyone was waiting for, and he didn't give a fig for freedom. He insisted the June 12 elections were fair and not fraudulent, ordered the protestors to stop demonstrating in any way, and obey their master Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Any opposition rallies are banned, he said, and any attempt to hold one will be put down with armed force.  His speech was as hard-line as it could possibly have been. It is 10pm Friday evening in Tehran as I am writing this, and protestors have begun shouting Allahu akbar - their cry of protest - from the rooftops.  Their cell calls, emails, and twitters give every indication that they plan to hold enormous rallies tomorrow in straight defiance of Khamenei and the mullah regime. There will be blood tomorrow.  But whose?

If you knew that baseball teams with winning records tended to be more profitable for their owners than those with losing records - and if you learned that the Baltimore Orioles had just been purchased by the World Umpires Association (MLB's umpire's union), would you expect the Orioles to win more or fewer games? Almost everyone implicitly understands why the umpires should not be allowed to own teams they referee. In a free-market economic system, the government is supposed to be the umpire and not a player. Its job is to set and enforce the rules, but if it is allowed to also become a player, by owning and managing business enterprises, it is unlikely to treat the competing companies fairly, and there will be little check on its own misbehavior. The record of government ownership and/or control of companies in the United States and elsewhere has been one long disaster. This promises to continue, and far more disatrously.

When it comes to foreign policy, President Barack Hussein Obama is a one-trick pony, and the trick isn't working. The leaders of Canada, France and Germany have condemned, in strong and forthright language, the fraud in Iran's presidential election, and the regime's bloody repression of the people protesting it.  Of the West's leaders, only the leader of America has equivocated. Mr. Obama said he does not wish to be perceived as "meddling" in Iran's internal affairs.  He had no qualms about meddling in Israel's internal affairs when he demanded a halt to building in settlements as a precondition to peace talks with the Palestinians. In any event, the president's even-handed approach between the oppressors in Iran and their victims has not produced the result he said he desired.   In fact, his foreign policy is failing abjectly everywhere.

David Letterman certainly settled one thing this week:  that the terms  "no-class pervert scumbag" and "liberal" are synonymous.   Sarah Palin wrote a classy yet scathing response to his depraved jokes about her 14 year-old daughter, but she shouldn't have restrained her husband Todd from responding how he wanted.  Like any father, he wanted to punch Letterman out. Todd wanted to issue a public statement saying something like: 

"Mr. Letterman, you have insulted my daughter in the most grossly perverted way.  I am on my way to New York as you read this to see you.  We shall settle this man-to-man, with our fists.  Prepare to defend yourself.  If you choose not to fight, you will have declared to the world that you are the yellow-bellied coward I know you to be."

Barack Hussein Obama is, by far, the most popular politician in America.  And there is little doubt who is number two. The city of Auburn in upstate New York, population 28,574, held its first annual Founder's Day celebration June 6.  The most famous of the city's fathers is William Seward, who as secretary of state purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867.  To commemorate the event, the city council invited the current governor of Alaska.  The parade featuring Sarah Palin drew more than 20,000 people, according to press reports. The next day Ms. Palin traveled to Long Island to speak at a fund raiser for a charity which aids the developmentally disabled.  Before that, she and her daughter, Willow, attended a New York Yankees game at the invitation of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The following night (6/08) on his national television show, David Letterman, being the cowardly pervert he is, told two unbelievably disgusting sexual jokes about 14 year-old Willow Palin. That many liberals found Mr. Letterman's remarks humorous speaks not only to their depravity, but to their fear.