Note: In an earlier post regarding the McCain campaign's video association of Obama with two current pop female pop celebrities, I mistakenly cited Lindsay Lohan instead of Britney Spears. Usually when I cite a reference to an article or ad, I check the original source and make a link to it. For some odd reason, I didn’t and thus my obvious mistake. Although blogs are mostly opinion oriented, I strive to make whatever I post fact-based since facts as well as the truth are important.

My apologies to TPM readers, to Ms. Lohan, and the McCain campaign.

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What is McCain really inferring by his association of Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears? It’s not merely being a celebrity, for his campaign could have chosen George Clooney, a liberal Hollywood hunk, or Brad Pitt.

No, these gals are just frivolous, airheads, the kind who suck up more media airtime like that frivolous two-book writing, Harvard-trained, University of Chicago lawyer professor, first-term senator from the Land of Lincoln. He’s like numerous other blondes in America pop culture: Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Anna Nicole Smith, or Pam Anderson, all airheads, all frivolous, some gold-diggers.

Women like Spears and Hilton are, after all, the essence of trophy wives; nice to look at, but you don’t take them seriously.

There’s nothing serious about this guy Obama. He doesn’t inspire people; he ain’t cool like the Senator McCain, who has a war record and years in Congress.

Obama isn’t a real nigga, black man; the kind that America fears but is used to: Mr. T. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Le Bron James, Samuel Jackson, These men exude some kind of niggatude that make them a known entity, and useful. You may hate them, but they are the black devils you know rather than the Obama devil you don't know.

Obama? He’s slim and sleek, which makes him suspicious in the eyes of some of the electorate who may not vote for him because he ain’t fat. He’s has nice smile, too.

In a word, a bimbo. No, two words, an Obama bimbo.

What is McCain really inferring by his association of Obama with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan? It’s not merely being a celebrity, for his campaign could have chosen George Clooney, a liberal Hollywood hunk, or Brad Pitt.

No, these gals are just frivolous, airheads, the kind who suck up more media airtime like that frivolous two-book writing, Harvard-trained, University of Chicago lawyer professor, first-term senator from the Land of Lincoln. He’s like numerous other blondes in America pop culture: Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Anna Nicole Smithe or Pam Anderson, all airheads, all frivolous, some gold-diggers.

Women like Lohan and Hilton are, after all, the essence of trophy wives; nice to look at, but you don’t take them seriously.

There’s nothing serious about this guy Obama. He doesn’t inspire people; he ain’t cool like the Senator McCain, who has a war record and years in Congress.

Obama isn’t a real nigga, black man; the kind that America fears but is used to: Mr. T. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Le Bron James, Samuel Jackson, These men exude some kind of niggatude that make them a known entity, and useful. You may hate them, but they are the black devils you know rather than the Obama devil you don't know.

Obama? He’s slim and sleek, which makes him suspicious in the eyes of some of the electorate who may not vote for him because he ain’t fat. He’s has nice smile, too.

In a word, a bimbo. No, two words, an Obama bimbo.

It's been interesting noting how some conservatives keep trying to make a leap in logic and equate American left-of-center politics with fascism or Nazism. As I noted before, the mere fact that Obama is able to draw thousands of people to his rallies seems to make the Right down right hysterical. They know he's charismatic and a gifted speaker, and can draw in numerous people who could help him affect change. Obama is more Christ-like than Hitlerian, and not because he walks on water.

So, let's compare the leadership qualities of Barack Obama and Adolf Hilter. And who would know better about the latter than Joseph Goebbels, who wrote in a 1929 essay, Der Fuhrer, celebrating Hitler's 40th birthday.

"A leader must possess character, will, ability, and luck. If these four characteristics form a harmonious unity in a brilliant person, we have a man called by history.
Character is the most significant factor. Knowledge, book learning, experience and practice do more harm than good if they are not based on strong character. Character brings them to their best expression. It requires courage, endurance, energy, and consistency. Courage gives a person not only the ability to recognize what is right, but also to say and do it. Endurance gives him the ability to pursue the chosen goal, even if apparently impossible obstacles stand in the way, and to proclaim it even if it is unpopular, even if it makes him unpopular. Energy mobilizes the strength to risk everything for the goal and the persistence to keep at it. Consistency gives his eye and mind the sharpness of knowledge and logic in thought and action that gives truly great people the ability to reach the eternally wavering masses. These manly virtues together comprise that which we call character. Character, in short, is style and behavior in the highest form."

By any stretch of the imagination, to varying degrees, the above qualities could be attributed to any American figure from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Martin Luther King, Jr. Or, diverse historical and contemporary figures such as Joan of Arc to Gandhi to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. What Goebbels is expressing is the romantic German leader, who possesses singular will, the will to triumph.

Once again, Goebbels:

"...The will distinguishes the man who acts from the man who merely thinks. It is the intermediary between knowledge and action. It is much more important for us to want that which is right than it is simply to know what is right. This is particularly true in politics. What good is it for me to know the enemy if I do not have the will to destroy him!"

Also, as Goebbels said, "Knowledge, book learning, experience and practice do more harm than good if they are not based on strong character." Obama seems by temperment an intellectual, albeit a practical and pragmatic one, and one guided and humbled by faith, that irrational quality of human existence that unnverves some people.

The mere fact that Obama sought to analyze lower-income whites as "clinging" to guns and relgion caused him to be charactrized as an "elitist." Often he was rerided as soft, a chump, not having the will to win simply because he adovocated a "different kind of politics," and in some cases, viewed by others, as emasculated by his wife.

Obama was recently recorded talking to David Cameron, the Tory leader, just on having the time to think and reflect. Now, one would think that is exactly the kind of quality one would want in a modern leader facing a complex world.

Here is a man in his prayer to God, pulled from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, asking for the wisdom to do what's right and protect his family--not the self-centered motive to be the maximum leader.

You have to love these guys, they never miss an oppotunity to smear. Fox News panel's Charles Krauthammer alluded to Obama's Berlin speech as having the whiff of Der Fuhrer.

Interestingly, Krauthammer neglected to mention the numerous American flags waving at the same speech.

What is one to make of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to become hold that position? Politician, wife, mother, grandmother, a woman often personified as a “San Francisco liberal.”

A woman with a killer political smile (or grimace), she was on NBC’s “Today Show” promoting her book, “Know Your Power,” a slim motivational tome that’s suppose to help women achieve their potential.

Dressed in a suave, summery, light green two-piece suit, she cheerfully answered some non-challenging questions from co-host Meredith Vieira in a five-minute segment.

Now, the “Today Show” is a supremely vacuous program; the show’s personalities— Vieira, Matt Lauer, Al Roker, and Ann Curry—are certifiable chatter-heads, clucking away endless about nothing most of the time, listening to the sound of their own voices, and spending a great deal of airtime on personality and culinary flotsam and jettison.

The “Today Show” model is so influential that all the other networks and even cable shows have the same format: chatter-heads sitting around running their mouths. Even Fox has the same format on “Fox and Friends,” and some Spanish stations have also adopted it.

(If one wants a good example of how utterly inane “Today” is, the show invited the Miss South Carolina airhead who couldn’t intelligibly answer a basic question about why Americans are so mis-educated, unable to find their own country on a map! She was invited on the show to "laugh" at herself.)

On “Today,” for almost every day of the last two weeks, there was a segment on the economy and how viewers could: save money budgeting; how to pick coupons from Coupon.com; picking the right city to retire in; looking after one’s finances; how to plan your retirement in these economically straitened times; along with emotionally manipulative stories that always spell "tragedy" (i.e., an injured or dead loved one), etc.

Not missing a beat, however, the show then turned around and did a segment on how the economy is stressing people, but never once admitted that one of the main instruments of stress is the constant television reporting of the economy’s hard times—especially by shows such as “Today,” and when "Today" does its lifestyle features, it’s basically only five-minutes of talkin- points captions.

So, not only is it stressing people, but it’s questionable if its lifestyle/service reporting is giving viewers much of anything of substance to help improve their lot, just tidbits. “Today” is a national show, so factor in that local news shows, as the Washington’s area WRC-Channel 4, are doing the same kind of “news” reporting ad infinitum.

Let’s face it, like everything else in America, this is about entertainment, not keeping people reasonably informed.

True to it’s time-honored format, Meredith Vieira only “substantive” questions were centered on asking Speaker Pelosi if Senator Hlillary Clinton had breached the marble ceiling, or her tampering down expectation that Barack Obama ought to pick Sen. Clinton as his running mate.

Now, it has often been alluded that Pelosi was a closet Obama gal, and some have wondered if that position was due to a philosophical/political kinship with Obama, or the fact that Pelosi was engaging in some classic political cock-blocking.

Had HRC won the nomination and then win the presidency, who would be the most powerful woman in America (and the world)?
Even if Obama loses, and he has a 50-50 chance of doing that as well as winning, Speaker Pelosi would still be the most politically powerful woman in the United States among powerful men.

Back to the original question: What is one to make of Pelosi, and the House Democrats?

Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats took over the House of Representatives in 2006, and have almost squandered every opportunity to show leadership. Skillful at winning elections, they have shown themselves to be bad at governance, handing lame-duck president George W. Bush unprecedented victories. They have shown themselves to be a party of capitulation unable to scale down the war and end it, or challenge the ever-increasing and unlawful expansion of presidential power that serially violates the Constitution.

Instead of aimless girl chat about empowering women (not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with that), Ms.Vieira could have asked some real questions of the Speaker, such as:

1. Why haven’t you and your Democrat colleagues use the power of the purse, i.e., the means to fund, to shut of money for the war in Iraq?
2. Why have you only recently allowed the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on the expansion of presidential power, which could lead to impeachment, rather than initiate them in early 2007?
3. Could you explain the news stories that you and other Democratic leaders had earlier knowledge of the torture and "enemy combtant" imprisonment policies of the Bush administration? Are House Democrats afraid of being called soft on terrorism?
4. Why have House Democrats become complicit with the egregious updating of FISA, giving immunity to telecommunication firms who broke the law? Once again, are House Democrats afraid of being called soft on terrorism?

So, what has Nancy Pelosi done with her new-found power? Given how craven the Democratic Party has behaved recently, will winning the White House, gaining more seats in both chambers, actually give them impetus to really change the direction of the country? Or, will the American people just be given more hype than actual hope regarding the possibility of actually doing something substantive?

Inquiring minds want to know.