Throughout the history of this country playing the role of a global power, the United States has faced down threats of fascism and communism. The country is now in the throes of a war against terrorism.

However, on ABC's Nov. 22 "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," a panel consisting of Washington Post columnist George Will, Liz Cheney of Keep America Safe, University of California, Berkeley professor Robert Reich and Walter Isaacson is the President and CEO of The Aspen Institute, warned the next ideological battle facing the country is that which China practices - an authoritarian market society or authoritarian capitalism.

"For 37 years, every administration has bet, since Nixon went to China, on a theory, and the theory was that capitalism, market economy, which requires a judicial system to enforce promises, which are called contracts, needs a vast dissemination of information and decision-making that capitalism by its mores and working would subvert the regime, that you could not have an authoritarian market society," Will said. "It's the Starbucks fallacy. It turns out to be a fallacy, that if the Chinese have a choice of coffees, they'll want a -- they'll demand a choice of political candidates. We may be wrong. It could be you can have an authoritarian system."

The roundtable members on Sunday's This Week derided or dismissed Sarah Palin, with David Brooks, the putative conservative columnist for the New York Times, declaring “she's a joke” and insisting “Republican primary voters just are not going to elect a talk show host” -- leaving it to PBS's Gwen Ifill, of all people, to come to her defense as a fellow woman.[MP3 audio available here]

Left-winger David Corn yearned for how she will damage Republicans while the Washington Post's Bob Woodward agreed with Brooks and George Will wondered: “Some conservatives think they have found in Sarah Palin a Republican William Jennings. Why they would want somebody who lost the presidency three times I do not know.”

The derogatory take from David Books on the November 15 This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC:

Yeah, she's a joke. I mean, I just can't take her seriously. We've got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama's trying to handle war. We just had a guy elected Virginia Governor who's probably the model for the future of the Republican Party, Bob McDonnell. Pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kind of boring. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it will never happen. Republican primary voters just are not going to elect a talk show host.

A year after Barack Obama was elected President, one thing has become perfectly clear: George Will is THE mainstream media member who seems completely comfortable pointing out the new White House resident's shortcomings.

Such happened again on the latest installment of ABC's "This Week" when host George Stephanopoulos began the Roundtable segment:

George, let me just begin with a threshold question. We're about a year out from the election. Has the President delivered on that promise of change?

Rather than the typical sycophantic response one normally gets from media figures when such questions are asked about Obama, Will marvelously whacked the ball right out of the park (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Want to be noticed by any one of the hosts that have a primetime show on MSNBC's weeknight lineup? Just figure out a way to make Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.  the subject matter, and there's an excellent chance either Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow will take a shot at it, or her, during their shows.

In the Oct. 25 Washington Post, George Will penned a column about Bachmann, outlining her ascendancy into the national spotlight, which told of her start in politics and how she grew to become reviled by the left. And it was just a matter time before one of the charming personalities on MSNBC made some sort of remarks about the column, albeit two days later. That came on Olbermann's Oct. 27 "Countdown" broadcast.

Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham on Sunday ridiculed ABC's Charles Gibson for his ignorance concerning last month's ACORN controversy.

As NewsBuster Tom Blumer reported September 15, when Gibson was asked that morning by a Chicago radio host about the Senate's decision to cut ACORN's funding over the organization's growing scandal, the ABC "World News" anchor didn't have a clue.

With this in mind, as the Roundtable discussion on Sunday's "This Week" turned to recent White House attacks on FNC, Ingraham used the Gibson incident as an example of how "of all the networks, Fox was going to hold the administration the most accountable...That's why they don't like Fox News" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

George Will on Sunday accused the media of manufacturing the return of government mandated healthcare to the current reform debate.

Discussing the subject on the recent installment of ABC's "This Week," Will said it was highly unlikely Democrats actually have the votes for what they call a "public option," but the media are assisting them in "cleverly and skillfully manufacturing a sense of inevitability that they hope will be self-fulfilling."

In effect, although it is quite doubtful the votes are currently there for any form of government run healthcare, the press are doing their darnedest to change that (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

"Sentences that begin 'The president says' are not as impressive as they used to be."

So marvelously stated ABC's George Will on Sunday's installment of "This Week."

But Will wasn't the only "Roundtable" panelist to utter something clever and/or revealing.

Quite the contrary, host George Stephanopoulos, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne also made statements on Sunday guaranteed to raise some eyebrows.

First up was Stephanopoulos who made a rather startling admission concerning exactly why the White House decided to give every senior citizen $250 (video embedded below the fold with transcribed highlights, relevant section at 19:12):

A marvelous thing happened on Sunday's "This Week": Donna Brazile said Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was "well-deserved," and host George Stephanopoulos couldn't restrain his laughter.

Such deliciously happened moments after George Will said, "[T]he Nobel Prize committee would with this decision have forfeited its reputation for seriousness if it had a reputation for seriousness."

Quite comically, Brazile was as serious as the Nobel committee (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, video available here for Internet Explorer users):

Longtime ABC journalist Cokie Roberts on Sunday harshly criticized fugitive director Roman Polanski, going so far as to joke, "As far as I’m concerned, just take him out and shoot him." Appearing on the internet-only segment of This Week, she bluntly stated, "But, Roman Polanski is a criminal. You know, he raped and drugged and raped and sodomized a child. And then was a fugitive from justice." She followed up with her "shoot him" quip.

Roberts’ comments were in stark contrast to the cautious remarks coming from many other journalists. On Monday’s Good Morning America, host Diane Sawyer referred to the director's arrest for the 1977 rape of a 13-year old as an "international incident." On Tuesday, Sawyer described the capture of Polanski in Switzerland as the culmination of "a 31 year-old prosecutorial obsession."

On Sunday, ABC's George Will uttered an inconvenient truth about Barack Obama that his adoring media have been ignoring since he first threw his hat into the presidential ring in February 2007: his rhetoric is filled with constant references to himself.

To prove the point on the most recent installment of "This Week," Will counted the number of times Mr. and Mrs. Obama used the words "I" and "me" during their speeches in Copenhagen Friday.

The numbers are shocking making it likely in Will's view that the word "vain" is going to eventually attach itself to Obama (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

Leave it to George Will to perfectly explain in just two words all the recent accusations by Democrats and their media minions that anti-government sentiment sweeping the nation is caused by racism.

Liberal McCarthyism.

Delicious.

Fortunately for those not understanding the reference, Will explained further when the Roundtable discussion on Sunday's "This Week" turned to all the recent pronouncements of racism directed at anyone having the nerve to challenge President Obama's agenda (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, syndicated columnist and ABC News contributor George Will created quite a firestorm last week with his call for American troops to be pulled out of Afghanistan.

Readers are encouraged to review the article in question as well as the criticisms here. 

On Sunday, at the beginning of the panel segment of ABC's "This Week," Will took on his critics by reading a letter he received from Marine Commandant General Charles Krulak (video embedded below the fold):

Syndicated columnist and ABC News contributor George Will must have known the firestorm that would be set off when his "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan" was published.

As a highly-respected conservative writer who's even held with some esteem by folks on the left, Will surely knew he was expressing a very unpopular position.

Yet, he still wrote it.

Subsequent to its contents being leaked before it appeared at the Washington Post, it seems a metaphysical certitude many NewsBusters readers heard about the piece and likely read opinions of it, but may not have taken the time to review it in its entirety.

Please do so, and then read what others have said about it (in no particular order):

In light of recent reports that Vice President Cheney had ordered the CIA to withhold information about a counterrorism program that was being planned during the Bush administration, on Sunday ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on both Good Morning America and on This Week suggested that the revelations may be "vindication" for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or that they at least "bolster" her claims about the CIA lying to her. Stephanopoulos even seemed to be pushing Pelosi to claim "vindication" even while the Speaker’s office was reluctant to do so. Stephanopoulos, from Good Morning America: "I spoke with Speaker Pelosi's office about that, and they don't want to use the word "vindication," but, clearly, it does bolster their case that on several occasions, they were either misled or not given relevant information that the Congress was supposed to have."

During the roundtable discussion on This Week, after conservative columnist George Will brought up the danger of leaks by members of Congress, since congressional members leaked the current story, Stephanopoulos again suggested the story helps Pelosi: "And part of the reason they wrote those letters was in defense of the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi ... they said that they had been misled, and, of course, the Speaker had said the CIA has lied to us on many occasions. I think she said they lie all the time. So this is a measure of vindication, I suppose, for the Speaker, even though she doesn't want to claim it."

During the roundtable discussion, it was left to Will to point out not only that the program "remained in the planning stages," but that the law Democrats are alleging may have been broken has a loophole, suggesting that withholding information on the program may have been legal. Will:

"I’ve always been struck by how -- and it’s not too strong a word -- how obsessed the President and the White House are with Fox News."

So said ABC's George Stephanopoulos during the Roundtable segment of Sunday's "This Week."

I kid you not.

With an on-screen chyron shockingly asking, "Free Media Ride For Obama?" the former member of the administration exceedingly paranoid of what it declared was a vast right-wing conspiracy actually discussed with his guests the fawning coverage the current White House resident is getting from the press.

Marvelously, George Will, for the second week in a row, did not disappoint (video available here, partial transcript follows): 

As President Obama tours the country advancing his universal healthcare initiative, there are some dirty little secrets that he and his minions in the media don't want Americans to know.

On Sunday, George Will during the panel discussion on ABC's "This Week," exposed some inconvenient truths about this controverial subject that would likely change much of the public's view if they were regularly made aware of them.

After host George Stephanopoulos opened the roundtable segment, Will marvelously cut to the chase (video available here): 

Asked by George Stephanopoulos to name the “most important thing we've learned” about President Barack Obama during his first one hundred days in office (which is still three days away), David Sanger, a Washington correspondent for the New York Times, asserted: “I think we've learned that he's more moderate than we had expected.” That says a lot about the mindset of New York Times reporters and prompted George Will to retort, during the roundtable segment on ABC's This Week: “He's less moderate than I thought. He's going to design our cars. He's going to design our light bulbs. He's going to tell us where our house shall be built. This is supervisory liberalism in the most nagging, annoying sort.”

Bob Schieffer brought aboard CBS's Face the Nation the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Tina Brown, Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Beast site, to assess Obama. Brown could barely contain herself, trumpeting “what a force-multiplier Michelle Obama has turned out to be” as she and her husband work in “flawless concert,” so while “the world is talking about torture and the Bush administration, then we have Michelle with her vegetable garden. Talk about Spring time in America!”

She's been popping up in a lot of places lately to chime in on the economy. 

This time Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington appeared on ABC's April 5 "This Week," where she voiced her disapproval of the March 30 decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) relaxing mark-to-market accounting rules.

"This week, we saw so many concessions to the banks," Huffington said. "We saw the suspension of mark-to-market, which is absolutely tragic. Japan, by not having mark-to-market, made it much harder for them to recover."

But as Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein of First Trust Portfolios recently wrote for Forbes magazine, mark-to-market accounting reinstitution was reinstated only in recent years. The last time it was in effect - during the Great Depression - it caused many bank failures.

Who cares if we're like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, careening in his pickup toward the brink of the rock quarry?  At least we're moving fast!

That seemed to be Claire Shipman's logic in urging speed in the implementation of the stimulus plan. The ABC correspondent made her curious comment today during the roundtable segment of This Week.

CLAIRE SHIPMAN: Don't you think that, I mean as George [Will] said, given that nobody knows the outcome, it seems as though the most important thing is speed here.

Will made the logical response.

The George Soros-funded Clinton front-group Think Progress expressed disappointment Sunday that conservative journalists who attended a dinner party with Barack Obama a few weeks ago haven't abandoned their political principles and become bleeding-heart liberals.

I kid you not.

Readers are forewarned to remove all food and fluids from their computer's proximity, for this is some truly hilarious stuff: