I must confess I never considered Barack Obama a lover of freedom. After all, when there was a democratic uprising in Iran, he went golfing. When he might have secured freedom for Syrians, at least from the threat of being exterminated by Assad and Putin, Obama first announced a red line, and then quickly erased it. When Russia consumed Crimea, Obama once again took to the links and worked on his approach shot.

Frankly, it never occurred to me that so close to the inauguration, I would still be dealing with Obama. But, like Michael Corleone, who kept trying to escape his destiny but was constantly being pulled back into the Mafia, the schmuck keeps pulling me back to my trusty old computer.

It may seem outrageous to refer to Obama as a freedom lover, but how else to explain that he has granted over 200 pardons and commuted the sentences of nearly 1400 convicted felons, and, for good measure, released another 200 jihadists from Guantanamo.

With just three days remaining in his term, he went so far as to commute the sentences of a traitor, Bradley/Chelsea Manning, and a terrorist, Oscar Perez Rivera.

One can only assume that Manning will be sprung in the Spring because Obama feels such allegiance to the transgender freaks who did whatever they could to support him, including, I imagine, trying to vote twice, an entitlement to which they no doubt felt, well, entitled.

In the case of Senor Rivera, who belonged to an anti-American Puerto Rican group that placed 130 bombs around the nation, I think I understand Obama’s motivation. For one thing, he proved to everyone’s satisfaction that he hated this country nearly as much as Obama does. For another, not one of those 130 explosive devices targeted an abortion clinic.

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While John Brennan spends every waking hour taking Donald Trump to task for questioning the political objectivity and competence of the intelligence community, what I’ve never heard him do is question the community’s vetting of Pvt. Manning. I mean, wouldn’t you think that somebody working at the CIA might have noticed that this little creep who was working in a sensitive area of military intelligence was dying to change his gender?

Wouldn’t you think they might have made it a bit more difficult for this Nancy boy to get his little mitts on 750,000 classified documents that he easily shot over to Julian Assange for worldwide dissemination, putting American soldiers and Afghan collaborators in mortal danger.

And let us not overlook former CIA employee Edward Snowden. Yet another example of our wonderful intelligence community working at the top of its game.

In the 50s, America had its Russian spies, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and Britain had theirs — a group of former Cambridge academics, including Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt — at least two of whom were homosexuals. The intelligence communities in both countries wound up with black eyes.

But, today, a third-rate mediocrity like John Brennan attacks the President-elect for daring to question the competence of the CIA, which has done little or nothing to ward off cyberattacks from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, and has provided a home to traitorous scum like Manning and Snowden. But, inasmuch as Jane Fonda is still walking around free, I suppose it’s too much to expect that Manning would have served out the remainder of his 35-year sentence.

What makes it all particularly bizarre is that this is all taking place at the same time that the Democrats are giving Russia hell over the so-called hacking of John Podesta’s email. For the crime of letting the world know that Podesta was so stupid that he used “password” as his computer password, Obama leveled economic sanctions against Russia and booted a handful of Russian diplomats (aka spies) out of the country.

Apparently, there were still liberals in America who, at least until now, had no idea just how cocked up Obama’s sense of priorities were. Hack the DNC and it’s World War III; steal several tons of classified documents and you get your sentence commuted. Doesn’t it even occur to those idiots who have sworn to boycott the inauguration that Manning would have served more jail time if he’d knocked over a 7-11?

Oh, and did I mention that as a going-away gift, we taxpayers will be called upon to cough up the $100,000 to finance the surgical procedure that will officially turn Bradley Manning into Chelsea Manning? Clearly, that’s a huge waste of money. I happen to know several people who would have volunteered to do the job for free.

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It was recently announced that the eight wealthiest people in the world have more wealth between them than the poorest half of the world’s population. I suppose if you happen to be one of the terminally offended, which sometimes seems to approach the 50% mark in America, I suppose you’re expected to break into tears. But half of the world’s population is not only poor, but backward, and would feel right at home in the Middle Ages.

The fact that these eight people have the same wealth as 3.5 billion people isn’t so surprising. To me, the bigger surprise is that those 3.5 billion people who include large numbers who live in mud dwellings and spend their lives coaxing oxen to walk around in a circle in order to grind meal own that much.

What I found fascinating about the list is that six of the eight individuals are Americans, the other two are a Spaniard and a Mexican. I think that’s a feather in the nation’s cap. On the other hand, five of the six are extremely liberal, which I think is extremely unfortunate. But at the same time, when you hear those on the Left go off on income inequality, do they have any idea they’re attacking such liberal icons as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg?

The only conservative in the group is Larry Ellison, and he spent his money supporting Marco Rubio, not Donald Trump.

I realize that the natural instinct of liberals is to demand that these eight guys divest themselves of everything and share it with the downtrodden. But I did a little adding and dividing and found that even if we took every last nickel they have and divided it equally with those 3.5 billion wretches, they would each wind up only $121.12 richer than they are today.

And if I know oppressed people, they would not invest their windfall in interest-bearing bonds or blue chip stocks. Instead, they would probably run out and buy platform shoes, tie-dyed shirts and lava lamps.

On the other hand, if it would mean that guys like Gates, Zuckerberg, Buffet, Bezos and Bloomberg, would wind up at freeway off-ramps holding up signs “Will work for food,” I just might go along with it.

(Note: It’s the day that many of you have been waiting for, the day that my memoir, “The Story of My Life,” is finally out and available at Amazon. Don’t be the last kid on you block to read about those occasions when my life intersected with the likes of Groucho Marx, Oscar Levant, Ginger Rogers, William Peter Blatty, Gene Kelly, Lizabeth Scott, George Burns, Burt Reynolds, Andy Warhol, George C. Scott, Billy Wilder, Jackie Gleason, Spiro Agnew, Carol Burnett, Jack Webb, Fred Astaire and…Sonny Tufts???!!!)