AND THE AMATEURISM CONTINUES - AT 7:43 A.M. ET:  Reader Jean Spik alerts us to another brilliant piece by Michael Ledeen, reporting on the Obama team's latest diplomatic gaffe.  They're coming by the day now, so please watch for the next one:

"He also sent a letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano (a member of the now defunct Communist Party), expressing confidence that the United States and Italy would work together “to overcome the current global political and economic hardships and build a safer world.” The only problem with the letter was that the Italian president does not make policy; that power resides with the prime minister and his cabinet. Perhaps the White House czars have issued an ukase stipulating that the American president writes only to his peers, and thus instead of addressing himself to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, President Obama wrote to a man who holds an almost entirely ceremonial position.

"This imprecision produced the predictable kerfluffle in Rome, as the leftist media and intellectuals pondered the event and concluded that Obama had deliberately stiffed Berlusconi. The Italian prime minister thus joins his British counterpart in wondering what hope they are supposed to find in the recent change in diplomatic protocol in Washington."

COMMENT:  Look, it gets worse.  Gateway Pundit reports that the president just wrote to former French President Jacques Chirac, an anti-American if ever there was one, but has yet to invite the current president of France, the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy, to Washington.

The beat goes on.  It's getting awfully hard to be pro-American.  Punish your friends, reward your enemies.  That seems to be the policy.

March 23, 2009