Good not-racists are the ones who cheer the helpful drones that kill women and children for their benevolent and not-racist humanitarian agenda.

Unfortunately one has to break a few eggs to make their hubris-free and not-racist humanitarian freedom Omelet.

I actually regret making such a big deal about it, because you made it clear that you were speaking of your experience in Saudi Arabia at a time when the country was mostly rural and was experiencing a boom in every respect. You didn't phrase it very diplomatically, but I actually don't think you meant it that way either. From my perspective, I'm like...well, Ramallah's had a great university for 60 years, etc...

I really don't know much about your other opinions. But I don't think you said it in any spirit of maliciousness. The only reason I brought it up was because I wasn't given the benefit of the doubt when I stepped on some toes of the equivalent in gender and age, and you were participating in a dog-pile in that respect. That's all. I actually learned something from the whole experience anyway, and that's good enough for me.

Although I am not particularly fond of Barack Obama's performance as President, I am even less fond of assholes who use racist terminology to describe him.

Barack Obama is an American, not an African.

God you really are dickhead aren't you? So calling someone an African is a derogatory racist slur now is it? What a pratt!!!

You have just gone an offended a large minority of Americans by saying that.

You are also mixing up citizenship with race aren't you? Of course you can be an American citizen AND an African as well can't you, you stupid boy.

Over in America you have a large African descendent population that have also been American for over a couple of centuries. But as Baldwin told us most carry the name of their last owners before emancipation. None of them nor none of the white people ever knew which part of Africa they actually came from. (research is being done now.)

But the amazing irony is, is that the first Black President you get doesn't come from that group but comes via the father straight from Africa!!

Now in Britain we also have a large Black population but they and we all know where they come from. Even average whites can know the difference between Ghanains, Nigerians or West Indians for instance. Lots of our blacks just like your very own Barry come directly from Africa.

So stupid boy when I describe the president as being Barry The African that is absolutely correct.

Yeah, fancy that, the neocon rag The Nation calling the Iranian election rigged, citing Chatham House, and contradicting the great American support for Ahmedinejad's goons, just in time for the EU to break relations with the same. Puts them in the same "you can cling to that belief if you like" camp as Roger Cohen, I guess.

Guess they just can't understand polls.

Her other complaint - - the one to which I refer - - was, specifically and explicitly, about the Nico Pitney incident, which she called "shocking".

When I watched her say that, I felt disappointed.

Historically, the President has had the right to call on any reporter he wants to call on at a press conference, that is not in dispute.

The dispute arises, and Helen Thomas' point is, that the White House has not historically been able to designate the subject of questions it will be asked. That clearly happened in this case and I agree with Thomas, it should not be celebrated. I don't care if the White House can pick and choose questioners because there really isn't any way to stop them from doing it from the podium, regardless of whether it's the President or the Press Sect. doing it. In this case, not only did the White House choose the reporter which could ask a question, it specifically chose that reporter AND designated that the question be about Iran beforehand. To me, that's a bridge too far.

Either the Obama Administration is transparent, as they promised during the campaign, or the Obama administration engages in stealth and secrecy. They cannot claim to be open and transparent and then pull crap like this. Basically, they planted a question because the President wanted an opening to deliver words on that subject.

Pitney, and therefore the HuffPo was either used or were a willing partner in a scam. I believe it was the latter.

there really is no using trying to explain the golden rule to our interventionist friends, whether it war or liberties or the central bank. Left or Right, they all have their interventionist plans in which Government coercion would be positive, where their starry-eyed idealism can save the world, if only they had the power. The Good Power, the Light Side of the Force. Not like Dick Cheney and his Dark Side.

They don't premise anything on the golden rule, they premise everything on their perceptions of themselves as do-gooders. They are fundamentally convinced that their intervention is ultimately good, and so they treat it is an axiom. It's convenient because it also provides cover for the force that gives their foundations any legitimacy. Without the strong hand that comes with spending more on force than every other nation combined, with thousands of nuclear weapons and over 700 bases in over 130 countries to show for it, their lectures on the virtues of US intervention are empty.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Resistance be damned. Nothing is ever off the table.