I always find it amazing when writers in the mainstream press seem to have so little knowledge of America and its history. Of course, I suppose that being blissfully ignorant of US history does help paper over their betrayal, substituting the feeling that they can maintain allegiance to American "ideals" as they attempt to advocate for the sort of socialist/communist vision that they want America to become, quite despite its true character and principles. Heck, if you don't know you are betraying your own country, you can't be ashamed of yourself for it, right? In any case, here we have another prime example of such a betrayal by The New York Times' Thomas Friedman from his May 4 piece where he has decided that America is finished, done, kaput. And guess what? It's all George W. Bush's fault -- shocking, I know.

Freidman imagines that he has found the pulse of the people and he has found that they are aching for nation building. Not nation building in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in the USA. He says we have little to show for our efforts in Iraq, that "we’re just not that strong anymore." He also claims that we have no "leverage" in Iran.

Heck, he should know. After all he and his paper have been attempting to foster these very situations for 8 years. If what Friedman is saying is true, then he and his anti-American paper deserve hearty congratulations for their success at nation destroying -- ours.

For your evening entertainment pleasure, there really was a great moment on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that was absolutely must-see TV.

Host George Stephanopoulos off-handedly mentioned "Operation Chaos" by telling guest Hillary Clinton:

Rush Limbaugh is asking Republicans to come out and vote for you in order to divide the Party.

Without skipping a beat, Clinton marvelously answered (video embedded right, h/t Breitbart):

Demonstrating how the mainstream media will view criticism of Barack Obama through the prism of past attacks on Democrats they consider illegitimate, Dean Reynolds concluded a Sunday night CBS Evening News story on Barack Obama by suggesting Democrats are well-justified in fearing Republicans will succeed in portraying Obama as “out of the mainstream,'” which Reynolds described as “code for 'unpatriotic'” in forwarding the red-herring, since it has worked “even against those who've received the purple heart.” To make his reference clear, as he spoke viewers saw video from the 2004 campaign of John Kerry.

Reynolds had relayed how Obama has “been mocking suggestions that he's out of the mainstream.” CBS then played a clip of Obama, in a stump speech, repeating the questions about him: “'We're not sure he shares our values.' 'We haven't seen him wear a flag pin lately.' 'His former pastor said some terrible things' and so, you know, 'can we really trust this guy?'”

Next, Reynolds ended his May 4 story from Indianapolis:

But 'out of the mainstream' is a charge Republicans habitually make against Democrats. It's code for 'unpatriotic.' And it worries Democrats that it's been so effective against their candidates in the past -- even against those who've received the purple heart.

Have you considered the delicious hypocrisy of Democrat presidential candidates that months ago refused to participate in debates sponsored by Fox News now practically lining up to appear on the cable news channel?

Chris Wallace certainly has, and on the most recent installment of "Fox News Sunday," asked Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean about this sudden change of heart by folks who just months ago were depicting the station as too biased to bother with.

What follows is a partial transcript of this segment (video embedded right):

Last Wednesday, ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" exposed a serious flaw in a television advertisement Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is running in Indiana (video embedded right, h/t Gateway Pundit).

In fact, Indiana newspapers began pointing out the former first lady's mistake almost three weeks ago after she spoke at a school in that state.

Yet, according to LexisNexis, no other television network felt this issue deserved any coverage, nor did many major newspapers outside of Indiana.

For some background, here's how ABC reported Hillary's flub on Wednesday (video available here):

My two cents say George Stephanopoulos gave Hillary a harder time than Tim Russert did Obama during their respective appearances on This Week and Meet the Press today. Russert never pinned Obama down on exactly what he knew of Rev. Wright's most controversial assertions and when he knew it.

Over on ABC, Stephanopoulos twice challenged Hillary to name a single economist who supported her proposal for a gas-tax holiday, and threw in her face the fact that even her big admirer in economist ranks, Paul Krugman of the NY Times, has criticized her over it. In exposing her inability to name a single practitioner of the dismal science who supported her plan [McCain, who's also called for a gas-tax holiday would presumably be similarly hard-pressed], Stephanopoulos left Clinton looking like a panderer. Stephanopoulos raised the issue right out of the box.

View video here.

Since calling global warming "the greatest scam in history," the founder of The Weather Channel John Coleman has been an outspoken advocate for climate realism.

This weekend, Coleman posted at his KUSI-San Diego blog an "Open Letter to Environmentalists" challenging them to campaign for "environmental goals on the basis of their own merit" while urging alarmists to "[l]et go of the global warming frenzy before it leaves [them] discredited and embarrassed."

Although readers are strongly encouraged to review the entire piece, here are some of the highlights:

Here's something you don't see every day: a liberal, female editor of a leading liberal online magazine stating with cameras rolling that most press members "Hate, hate Hillary Clinton."

Yet, that's exactly what occurred Sunday morning when Salon's editor-in-chief Joan Walsh spoke some truths about the media's love affair with Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama, as well as their disdain for the former first lady (video embedded right).

Also surprising was Walsh's view of liberal assertions that the Rev. John Hagee is as big an issue for Sen. John McCain's candidacy as Rev. Jeremiah Wright is for Obama's.

But, before we get there, here were Walsh's comments about media bias during this campaign:

Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks has officially endorsed Barack Obama for president with the following video first posted last evening at the former Bosom Buddy's My Space page:

Imagine that a "documentary" film-maker—whose most notable former credit was a work advancing the notion that extra-terrestrials did indeed visit Area 51—brought forth a new work suggesting that key elements of the Prophet Mohammed's story had been fabricated. What are the odds ABC would devote a segment of Good Morning America to a respectful interview of the filmmaker and discussion of his work?

But that's exactly what ABC did regarding someone who has produced a documentary ["Bloodline"] calling into question key aspects of the story of Jesus Christ. Here's how GMA weekend co-anchor Bill Weir introduced the segment this morning:

Well, here's a question, was Jesus married with children? Was the Resurrection a trick pulled off by his widow? The possibility, the world's greatest cover-up, was the basis of the smash novel and movie The Da Vinci Code. And though those ideas have been largely dismissed by academics as fiction, documentary film-maker Bruce Burgess believes he has now found evidence to advance that theory. Here's a clip from his new film.

View video here.

Why does it seem that, when a Democratic politician's career is on the line, Old Media reporters find a way to make it look like it's only Republicans who want to push him or her out the door?

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who for a while was seen as the Buckeye State's version of New York's now-disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer, is fighting for his political life.

In a Friday press conference statement (a JPG transcript of statement, opening in a separate window, is here), Dann admitted to an extramarital affair with an unidentified employee and announced that he was discharging three of his closest advisers over formal complaints of sexual harassment. Storm clouds potentially loom over the fallout from this, plus other events and incidents too numerous to detail here, occurring on Dann's watch.

Dann declared Friday that he has no plans to resign.

By mid-Saturday, two of Ohio's major newspapers, and many of its smaller ones, had issued editorial calls for Dann's resignation. It was clear that many others would follow on Sunday -- and they did. Ohio's left-leaning blogs are also mostly in the Dann-must-go camp.

Yet here's how the Associated Press's John McCarthy played the Dann story in his Saturday mid-afternoon report:

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: equating Rev. Hagee with Rev. Wright:

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for "John Hagee Roman Church Hitler," and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive...Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb. 27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives' favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race...Mr. Hagee, it's true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled "homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came."

Is there any similarity between the Hagee issue and Wright? Is the left grasping at straws to deflect criticism from Obama? Isn't there a huge difference between attending a church for 20 years and accepting an endorsement? Or are Rich and others making this comparision correct, and this is going to be a problem for McCain?

When Washington Post writer Sally Quinn came on the Charlie Rose show Wednesday night to discuss the Reverend Wright controversy, the accusations against whites flew wildly. Obama’s distancing from Wright was "so incredibly sad," and happened because "we are still a racist country," where "so many white Americans...have absolutely no idea what goes on inside black churches on a Sunday morning...and I think it brought out a lot of latent racism." She concluded the interview by insisting that whites "go to their white churches, and you wonder how they can call themselves Christians and still look at other people as though they are inferior."

Sally Quinn came on with Rev. Floyd Flake, a former Congressman from New York, who also discussed this with Rose the first time Wright became controversial. Quinn tried to say that Obama’s greater condemnation of Wright would help Obama, but it was tragic.

In an interesting way, I think it may have helped Obama, because I think that by [Wright] coming out the way he did, he allowed Obama to come out much more forcefully the way he did today. And he had to. He had absolutely no choice.

PBS talk show host Charlie Rose turned to the Reverend Wright issue on Wednesday night. Former New York Times music critic Kelefa Sanneh insisted the fuss over Wright comments like the government inventing AIDS for black genocide were a "red herring," that when you look at Wright’s old speeches and books, "there’s not much in there that’s hugely controversial," and even when he gets political, "he’s not making wildly controversial statements by and large." Sanneh also seemed to insist blacks couldn’t be racists.

Sanneh began by insisting that the Wright issue is being overblown, because there were radical things that Martin Luther King said that "would generate enormous controversy today." (Brent Bozell touched on that, the 1967 King speech at Riverside Church alleging both white and black American soldiers were brutalizing Vietnamese civilians.) But Rose was tough enough to respond: "But I want to know what that [King speech] was that’s equivalent to saying AIDS is a government conspiracy to kill black children?"

Is it just me or does it seem like the more global warming alarmists are challenged by real science, the more bizarre and silly the claims get?

I run GlobalWarmingInsanity.com, which highlights the latest absurd, funny and downright silly claims about global warming. Check out a couple of the nutty headlines from just the past few days:

* Global Warming Causes More Shark Attacks

* Jakarta: Is Horse Pee Worse Than Gobal Warming?

* Latest Global Warming Victim: Your Lawn

* Global Warming To Increase HIV/AIDS Deaths

The crazy just keeps coming.

My theory is the louder and more bizarre the claims the more worried the alarmists are that they could actually be wrong.