It was all there in one phrase...

"We were the nation that liberated Europe..."

The President's willful ignorance and the nationalistic arrogance he has fostered these last six years in office were on full, flagrant display last night.

Fact: Without the United States, Hitler would likely have prevailed in Europe and Africa.

BUT

Fact: Without Russia and England, Hitler surely would have prevailed in Europe. And one can probably throw in the French, Greek and Turkish Resistance movements into the mix and say the same thing about them.

Last night, the President of the United States spat in the face of the Russian people, who lost many tens of thousands more men and women in the battles on the Eastern Front than the U.S. suffered on the Western Front and in Africa (and Asia). He also belittled our English, Irish and Scot friends as well.

But this one particular rewriting of history is less important than the tenor of the speech and of this presidency: "We're number one. What we say, goes. Follow, or get rolled over." And he has the NERVE to challenge opponents as protectionist, when what they are is internationalists.

There are lies and then there is what I like to call Post-Modern Mendacity. Post-Modern Mendacity holds that a carefully worded half truth that intentionally creates a false impression is not a lie because it cannot be proven false, and therefore, it is appropriate in political discourse.

The current administration has told its share of bald-faced lies in the last seven years (see Bush's now oft- shown statements about wiretapping from 2004), but usually limits itself to Post-Modern Mendacity.

One example: Last night the president clearly sought to create the impression that Iran is a dictatorship. It isn't. It's as much a democracy, and perhaps more of one, than our close allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The fact that their newly elected leader is a complete jerk, a Holocaust denier, and--by all accounts--a megalomaniac, doesn't change the fact that his regime is NOT a dictatorship.

Further: The 'march of democracy' rallying cry was filled with half-truths. It is true that democracies have been springing up all over the world and that this is, so far as I can tell, a wonderful, fantastic, awesome trend. BUT...of those hundred or so new democracies, NONE (save for Japan and the Philippines) were imposed by an outside force invading a country, toppling their despotic government, destroying their infrastructure and THEN 'nation-building' a democracy. Imposed democracy doesn't work...not without a complete subjugation of the people and lengthy--very lengthy--occupation, and in the face of religious opposition, perhaps never.

I suppose some might suggest that I have lost all perspective so far as this administration is concerned. But my response would be that this administration has lost all touch with reality.

How can the President stand up with a straight face and chastise the American people for our dependency on oil the same week that Exxon/Mobil posts record profits and not see that the energy policies of his administration have: (1) been little more than corporate welfare for the only companies in the world making more money than Wal-Mart and (2) actively fostered that dependence? It was the Bush administration that expanded tax credits for gas guzzling commercial vehicles, and it was the Bush administration's energy bill that was passed last year. A glance at that bill reveals that much of the R&D Exxon/Mobil now says it needs these profits to fund are actually to be funded by the American taxpayer through the provisions of that bill.

I just don't get it. How does he get away with it?

Oh, and by the way...in the same month when major employers in the auto and food industries announced the permanent elimination of over 40,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs in the US, and while hundreds of thousands remain displaced, impoverished or unemployed because of 2005's natural disasters...to assert once again that statutory and constitutional protection of the definition of marriage should be a priority of congress, the legislatures, or the administration is not simply homophobic, it's profoundly immoral and just plain stupid.