US News

KERREY’S PRAISE OF BARACK A BIG O-BOMBO

NEW SCHOOL Presi dent and former US Sen. Bob Kerrey just couldn’t help himself from applauding Barack Obama after endorsing Hillary Rodham Clinton in Iowa yesterday – until he gave a left-handed compliment that almost sounded like it was cooked up in Clinton’s headquarters.

“I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim,” Kerry told The Washington Post.

“There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

Obama brought reporters along just hours earlier as he attended church services in Iowa yesterday, hoping to dispel false Internet rumors that he is a Muslim.

*

Call it Hillary’s alien inspiration.

The former first lady wants to take America back to the movie references of the 1990s.

“Remember that movie ‘Independence Day,’ where invaders were coming from outer space and the whole world was united against the invasion?” she asked at a campaign event Saturday.

“Well, why can’t we be united on behalf of our planet?”

In 1996, Bill Clinton mused about the movie, saying Americans could beat the aliens.

“Yes, I think we’d fight them off. We’d find a way to win. That’s what America does – we’d find a way to win if it happened.”

geoff.earle@nypost.com