Let us now praise Barack Obama.

Nixon in 1968, unlike Obama 2008, was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet, in 1972, he won what, in some measures, was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.

You want a culture where citizens are free to express themselves and so live in the openness necessary to the functioning of a successful economy? Israel has a free press, much of it openly hostile to the parties in power.

As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.

Our compulsive hunger always to know first, speak first and decide first has only been amplified by the fact that we can now all participate instantly in a virtual version of a national cocktail-party conversation on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.

For the record, I am not an admitted homosexual, nor am I a homosexual, though I do know the lyrics to every show tune ever written, which might perhaps account for the confusion.