President Obama heightens tensions with our allies -- not just Germany, but also France and certainly Israel -- at the same time as he kisses up to anti-democratic and adversarial regimes in the Middle East.

It's all too eerily reminscent of Jimmy Carter's presidency, which pursued the same approach and ultimately achieved the distinction, as Henry Kissinger put it, of having "the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War."

If you're not convinced some ugly similarites exist, note with trepidation that Carter is praising Obama's Mideast policies.   EEEK.