AND THEN THERE'S BRITAIN – AT 7:50 P.M. ET:  As the Obamans smile upon our enemies, they continue to heap subtle and not-so-subtle abuse on our friends.  While the Israeli prime minister was distinctly humiliated in Washington recently, no ally has been more "dissed" in the last year than Britain, to the utter indifference of most of the Washington press corps.

Charles Krauthammer notes the record, and also notes that another member of the Commonwealth is getting the cold shoulder from The One:

Obama visits China and soon Indonesia, skipping India, our natural and rising ally in the region -- common language, common democracy, common jihadist enemy. Indeed, in his enthusiasm for China, Obama suggests a Chinese interest in peace and stability in South Asia, a gratuitous denigration of Indian power and legitimacy in favor of a regional rival with hegemonic ambitions.

Oh Charles, get over it.  India is so...so past.  I mean, dearie, they've gone capitalist.  How can we cheer the new oppression?  And they haven't crashed planes into American buildings.  Have they no pride?

The humiliation of Winston Churchill's homeland began as soon as Obama took the oath:

What is it like to be a foreign ally of Barack Obama's America?

If you're a Brit, your head is spinning. It's not just the personal slights to Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- the ridiculous 25-DVD gift, the five refusals before Brown was granted a one-on-one with The One.

Nor is it just the symbolism of Obama returning the Churchill bust that was in the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be out of Obama's sight, could it not have been housed somewhere else on U.S. soil rather than ostentatiously repatriated?

Perhaps it was the State Department official who last year denied there even was a special relationship between the United States and Britain, a relationship cultivated by every U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.

How to explain this?  After all, as noted, Obama has treated many allies badly.  However...

...the Brits, our most venerable, most reliable ally, are the most disoriented. "We British not only speak the same language. We tend to think in the same way. We are more likely than anyone else to provide tea, sympathy and troops," writes Bruce Anderson in London's Independent, summarizing with admirable concision the fundamental basis of the U.S.-British special relationship.

Well, said David Manning, a former British ambassador to the United States, to a House of Commons committee reporting on that very relationship: "[Obama] is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there."

What?  You mean we're permitted to discuss such things?  After years of Americans being told by the coastal elites that culture was pretty much everything, we were instructed during the 2008 campaign that it would be "racist" to mention it in relation to the man who would be president.  Why, he was just like all of us.

Finally...

How can you explain a policy toward Britain that makes no strategic or moral sense? And even if you can, how do you explain the gratuitous slaps to the Czechs, Poles, Indians and others? Perhaps when an Obama Doctrine is finally worked out, we shall learn whether it was pique, principle or mere carelessness.

COMMENT:  I suspect principle.  And, given the taking over of 1/6th of the American economy through Obamacare, and the acquisition of General Motors, I think it may get much worse.  Quite a guy we elected.

April 2, 2010