Hard-pressed

Martin Cothran, Discovery Institute blogger, Focus on the Family stooge, and generally unpleasant person, quotes Patrick Buchanan on Yom HaShoah. Buchanan, in addition to being a failed presidential candidate, is a conspiracy loon and a anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. In any event, Buchanan is on about how President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton didn't create a diplomatic spat when the President of Nicaragua complained about American military involvement with the terrorist Contras.:

After Daniel Ortega finished spitting in our face, accusing us of inhumanity toward Fidel Castro's Cuba, Obama was asked his thoughts.

"I thought it was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought."

Hillary Clinton was asked to comment: "I thought the cultural performance was fascinating," she cooed. …

Thus the nation that won the Cold War, contained the cancer of Castroism in Cuba, liberated Grenada, blocked communist takeovers of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, and poured scores of billions in aid into this region was left undefended by its own leaders at the Summit of the Americas.

Responding to different whines of wingnut impotence (regarding Obama's pleasant greeting for the President of Venezuela), Obama and "Dan from CNN" had this exchange:

Q … Now you've had this friendly interaction with Mr. Chavez. Are you concerned at all about how this might be perceived back in the U.S. as perhaps being soft? Already one senator is calling this friendly interaction irresponsible.…

THE PRESIDENT: …we had this debate throughout the campaign, and the whole notion was, is that somehow if we showed courtesy or opened up dialogue with governments that had previously been hostile to us, that that somehow would be a sign of weakness. The American people didn't buy it. And there's a good reason the American people didn't buy it -- because it doesn't make sense.

You take a country like Venezuela -- I have great differences with Hugo Chavez on matters of economic policy and matters of foreign policy. His rhetoric directed at the United States has been inflammatory. There have been instances in which we've seen Venezuela interfere with some of the -- some of the countries that surround Venezuela in ways that I think are a source of concern.

On the other hand, Venezuela is a country whose defense budget is probably 1/600th of the United States'. They own Citgo. It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States. I don't think anybody can find any evidence that that would do so. Even within this imaginative crowd, I think you would be hard-pressed to paint a scenario in which U.S. interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela.

So if the question, Dan, is, how does this play politically, I don't know. One of the benefits of my campaign and how I've been trying to operate as President is I don't worry about the politics -- I try to figure out what's right in terms of American interests, and on this one I think I'm right.

Cothran hopes that isn't how Obama runs the military. I rather hope it's exactly how the military is treated. Politics stops at the water's edge for a reason. For comparison, Venezuela spends $1.7 billion on its military, while Nicaragua spends about $32.8 million. Talk is cheap, and doesn't do much harm. Ortega and Chavez are problematic figures, and sometimes the best way to undermine a troublesome blowhard is to let their own intemperate stupidity do its own work.

With that in mind, I remind you that Pat Buchanan did not just repeat Holocaust denialism from the German American Information and Education Association (which decries that "our children are still being poisoned by the loathsome Zionist 'Holocaust' story), he also said that World War II was "unnecessary," and that "Had there been no war there would have been no Holocaust in my judgment." Indeed, he says:

had Britain not given an insane war guarantee to Poland and then go on the war on behalf of a Poland it could not save, I don't think there would have been any war in Europe. I don't think there would have been a war against the Western democracy. At the very least, all the Jews of Western Europe would have survived.

Cothran was very upset when he got labelled as a bigot last fall, but that label seems increasingly accurate. He opposes equal rights for gays and lesbians, wrongly claims that gays and lesbians are more likely to be abusive, and now quotes a Holocaust denier on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Judge for yourself.