Is Barack Obama a liberal politician who wants bi-partisanship and semi-moderate policies that appeal to most Americans, or is he a far-left dream-come-true radical?

He can’t be both, despite campaigning that way.

Follow-up question: Is your answer to the above question different now than it was during the election?

I haven’t been up to date on all the good news lately, but a quick browsing of Hot Air caught my eye. It was about Sarah Palin’s recent speech in Hong Kong:

For a speech that some on the left stupidly maintained was an elaborate “prank,” it sure does seem to have been treated pretty seriously by those who were there (seriously enough, in fact, to inspire two Palin-haters to walk out in a huff).

I don’t have much to say about her speech because I didn’t watch the clip (nor do I plan on it), but I do want to say this: Since when are conservatives okay with Americans, particularly famous Americans, dissing America overseas?

This has been a sore point for conservatives and Republicans over the recent years because of the seemingly never-ending amount of America-bashing (Bush-bashing) that liberals have done overseas. From the Dixie Chicks to Barack Obama himself, we have maintained that political dissent on American soil is one thing, but taking the fight overseas is unacceptable.

Is it now okay that we have someone America-bashing (Obama-bashing) overseas because she’s one of us and we agree with her? Absolutely not. As soon as we leave American soil we should all become defenders of our country and leave the bickering at home. It’s the same reason that husbands and wives might be fighting about something but relentlessly defend each other to anyone who might ask about it.  We aren’t perfect and we screw up, but how about we handle our domestic problems, domestically, instead of blathering about it overseas.

Finally, I’m not sure who was in attendance at Palin’s speech, but let me be clear about one last point: I don’t care if she was talking only to Americans or foreigners as well. This speech was billed as her “Hong Kong” speech and it absolutely has the appearance of Palin taking the our domestic spute outside the house.

And I, for one, think that’s unacceptable, which is a viewpoint that many of my conservative friends shared when it was the Dixie Chicks and Obama – will they stick to their standards when it’s Palin? It doesn’t seem likely.

Liberal critics of Sen. Ben Nelson’s position on health care reform sent out a new plea Tuesday asking for financial help in keeping a statewide television commercial that targets the Nebraska Democrat on the air.

The hysterical part of this is that instead of airing commercials that try to convince voters that ObamaCare is a good idea (which, admittedly, is a losing battle), they’ve decided to run attack ads about how Senator Nelson doesn’t support a bill that Americans don’t support.

This would have been like Hillary Clinton running ads against Obama in the primaries where she attacks him for being against the Iraq war.

Like most of the moves that Democrats have been making since they took the reigns this year, I welcome to the effort. The worst case scenario here is that these commercials help Nelson win more support for taking the same side on the issue as his constituents.

And honestly – am I going to complain that a Democratic Senator is too popular to beat in 2012 because he was against ObamaCare? Okay maybe a little.

The White House disagreed this afternoon with the contention by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, that the disruptions at town hall meetings are “un-American,” as the Democratic congressional leaders contended in a USA Today op-ed this morning.

“I think there’s actually a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One when asked about the comments.

Clever how Team Barry words this, right? They want you to know that they don’t think you’re being un-patriotic, but still can’t acknowledge that you’re doing anything more than “shouting at politicians.” Good call, Mr. President.

The White House might not think we’re un-patriotic, but they definitely think we’re delusional. Their new website to confront the “myths” about “health insurance reform” was put together to give us “reality checks.” And the links to share such “reality checks” via Facebook and Twitter have the condescending  instructions to “Give others a healthy dose of reality.”

Well, gee thanks Mr. President. I really appreciate you listening to my concerns about healthcare reform. Er, I mean, health insurance reform. It’s good to know that you think I’m in need of a “healthy dose of reality.” At least you don’t think I need a “healthy dose of patriotism.”

And I say that with all do respect, of course. This guy is clearly just an average American worried about healthcare for his son. He isn’t polished and he’s not rattling off talking points that sound like they’ve been force fed to him by the RNC.

So what say you Ms. Pelosi? Is this one of the un-patriotic Nazis that the Republican opposition has been organizing into fake protests and angry mobs? Or are you just as full of it?

Citing what it calls “a troubling trend” of “wild rumors and scare tactics,” the White House Monday announced the launch of http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/, a new Web page which “focuses on what reform really means for you and your family” and “debunks some common myths along the way,” White House New Media Director Macon Phillips wrote on the official White House blog.

In keeping with President Obama’s use of social networking sites to engage and utilize his network of supporters during his presidential campaign, the new page also provides users with a number of ways to notify their own networks of contacts about the page and its content.

The Web page features half a dozen videos from Obama aides who discuss various aspects of health care reform and it also has a set of “faq’s” or frequently asked questions about health care reform.

I think the only thing Obama has done as frequently as appoint a new czar is create a new website. I mean seriously – is this the best that The Most Intellectual Cabinet Ever can come up with every time there is a problem? How do we give people more faith in the stimulus? Start a website! How can we find out who is dissing healthcare? Post a blog entry! How can we stop healthcare from turning into our Waterloo? Uh.. how about we… uhh.. start a website!

We get it Team Barry: You guys are like, the most, tech-savvy administration ever. You even had your own iPhone app! Wow! You uber-tech trendiness makes me really feel like I can relate to my government. I’m so glad we didn’t elect John McCain because I heard he didn’t even use e-mail or something.

But do the Democrats really think they are going to turn this mess around with a website that repeats the same lies, over and over? If you go to the new “Reality Check” website, it’s a collection of videos defending ObamaCare. And do you know what these super-persuasive videos are? People working for the Obama Administration (or former Obama cronies) saying that what everyone else says about healthcare reform is wrong.

Now tell me, how convincing do you think this is really going to be? Obama has had more than one prime time press conference to defend his attempt to socialize medicine, and the more people hear about it, the more they don’t like it. What good do Obama and his fellow Democrats really think they can do talking about it more and more?

One dominant theme we’ve seen in these exploding town halls is that Americans feel like they are being lied to by supporters of ObamaCare. Don’t get me wrong – people are furious about what’s in the bill – but they’re even more furious about their congressmen lying about it. What’s the logical conclusion here that Obama and crew are missing? The more you say things that people now know are lies, the bigger the whole you are digging. You doubt that’s the case? Try and convince me that people like this guy are going to see the light just because they watched a video where people working for the White House put up a video online.

So good luck, Team Barry. I’m sure your new website is going to work flawlessly. Or, at least as well as Pelosi calling grassroots opponents of the bill Nazis and “un-American” has.

“The White House is in bit of a conundrum because of this privacy statute that prohibits the White House from collecting data and storing it on people who disagree with it,” Judge Andrew Napolitano, a FOX News analyst, said Friday.

“There’s also a statute that requires the White House to retain all communications that it receives. It can’t try to rewrite history by pretending it didn’t receive anything,” he said.

“If the White House deletes anything, it violates one statute. If the White House collects data on the free speech, it violates another statute.”

Whoops. Who knew that encouraging citizens to report each other for disagreeing might cause some, er, problems?

I’ve been away for the last week and haven’t really had the opportunity to blog since all of this tip line nonsense began. Plenty has been said across the blogosphere and elsewhere about Obama’s new snitch line. Clearly any level-headed person who hears that our executive branch is collecting information about people who disagree with them is going to be suspicious. Add that to the White House’s threats to “punch back twice as hard” and people are going to start to wondering what country they live in.

Here’s the real question though: how is that a party and ideology that is so obsessed with privacy when it comes to aborting children during pregnancy can, with a straight face, say that they don’t see what is wrong with our Commander-in-Chief collecting names for a political hit list? How can the party that spent 8 years telling us that dissent is the highest form of patriotism, actually see nothing wrong with our President collecting names to punch back against twice as hard?

Bush took enormous amounts of criticism over his tenure – probably as much or more than any recent president especially given he was the first to have to deal with being attacked from the blogosphere. Not once did he encourage his supporters to start ratting out people they heard disagreeing with his policy. And let’s be clear about one thing: Obama is collecting names of people who disagree with him on policy and nothing more. These aren’t people making threats to him, Democrats, or the nation. These are people who have nothing more than policy disagreements with him and the Democrats.

If the exploding townhalls aren’t a clue to the Obama Administration that things aren’t going according to plan, I don’t think anything will wake them up. And if they don’t wake up soon, they’re going to start punching back twice as hard against the people who put them in office.