A Spork in the Drawer

Always Keeping America Safe

Nelson Mandela is on the Ministry of Homeland Security's terrorist watchlist.

Yes, that Nelson Mandela.

Feel safer now?

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STUNNING REVELATION!!!!!

The US didn't invade Iraq!

The last six years were all a bad dream I suppose.

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An Annual Spring Ritual Returns

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran:

A second American aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday as the Pentagon ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the planning is being driven by what one officer called the "increasingly hostile role" Iran is playing in Iraq - smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops.

[...]

Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq. Later this week Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is expected to confront the Iranians with evidence of their meddling and demand a halt.

If that doesn't produce results, the State Department has begun drafting an ultimatum that would tell the Iranians to knock it off - or else.

You just know that St. John would love a little October Surprise. And with this administration running things...

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Throw The Dogs A Bone

James Fallows on the McCain-Clinton "gas tax holiday" scheme:

The pandering and ignorance-across-party-lines represented by the John McCain-Hillary Clinton united front for a temporary reduction in the gasoline tax should make Americans hold their heads in their hands and moan. No one who has thought about this issue thinks that it will actually reduce prices or -- more important -- help the the people disproportionately hurt by $100+/barrel oil and $4 gasoline. And to the extent it has any effect on America's long-term approach to energy policy, transportation, oil dependence, and climate change, the effect will be perverse.

I can imagine that John McCain, who boasts about his sketchy command of economics, might consider this a good idea. But the master of policy, Hillary Clinton??

Even Hillary supporter Paul Krugman is scratching his beard:

Is the supply of gasoline really fixed? For this coming summer, it is. Refineries normally run flat out in the summer, the season of peak driving. Any elasticity in the supply comes earlier in the year, when refiners decide how much to put in inventories. The McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal comes too late for that. So it’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.

The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing.

I agree that Hillary is too intelligent and knowledgeable to believe that this is a good idea. St. John, of course, is neither. So the only conclusion is that Hillary is engaging in a standard pander, possibly a double-pander: Fool the rubes with a simplistic "fix" for economic woes and maybe throw a few more subsidized dollars to the oil companies.

And everybody knows they need it.

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When Presidents Weren't Insane

Ike:

At a Cabinet meeting in mid-August 1958, as the threat of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan was developing, Air Force Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained "that at the outset American planes would drop 10- to 15-kiloton bombs on selected fields in the vicinity of Amoy," a coastal city on the Taiwan Strait now called Xiamen, according to the documents.

But "the President simply did not accept the contention that nuclear weapons were as conventional as high explosives," according to the now-declassified Air Force history of the Taiwan crisis.

In releasing the official history, William Burr of George Washington University's National Security Archive said Eisenhower's decision forced Air Force leaders to think more seriously about conventional warfare instead of relying on nuclear arms.

[...]

When informed that Eisenhower had insisted that first strikes be made with high explosives, Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, the Pacific Air Forces commander, described "this idea of limited response as disastrous . . . and warned that the United States should either be ready to use its most effective weapons -- in his opinion nuclear bombs -- or stay out of the conflict," according to the history.

George & Dick:

Revelations that the Bush administration is developing new nuclear weapons to target Iraq, North Korea and others have been greeted with alarm as a radical departure from established U.S. policy.

In fairness:

A shift in this direction began in 1990 under Vice President Dick Cheney when he was secretary of defense, and was accelerated after the Persian Gulf War. By the mid-1990s the Pentagon already was working to integrate the possible use of nuclear weapons to respond to biological or chemical attacks.

The difference between the current administration and the previous one is that BushCo™ would probably love to lob a few teeny-tiny nukes.

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Our Friends On The Right

Right-winger extraordinaire Ben Stein - famous for Ferris Bueller's Day Off and a little-watched basic cable game show - recently made a "documentary" called Expelled (not going to provide link) which is really an extended hysterical screed against evolution. Various "real" scientists were interviewed for it under false pretenses including blog-favorite PZ Myers. Here's what Stein says about PZ:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.

Wow.

Just wow.

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Morning Has Broken

I wonder which Democrat will be forced to denounce somebody today.

Perhaps a picture of some pop tart's bare shoulder will surface and distract everybody!

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His Petulancy Strikes Again

From this morning's presser:

Q Can I just add to that, a couple weeks ago —

THE PRESIDENT: No, you can’t. This is the second follow-up. You usually get one follow-up, and I was nice enough to give you one. I didn’t give anybody on this side a follow-up, and now you are trying to take a second follow-up.

Q Can I just say —

THE PRESIDENT: They just cut off your mic. You can’t, no.

Q A couple weeks ago you said —

THE PRESIDENT: Now she’s going to go without the mic. This is awesome.

"This is awesome"!?

265 days.

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And Speaking Mavericky McMaverick...

Kevin Drum makes the point:

Can we stop pretending to be children about this? There's only one reason for a politician to make sure that all his assets are in his wife's name: it's to make sure that no one knows anything about his assets. It's not as if McCain is the first pol to try this, after all.

(Kevin then goes on to ask the stunningly dense rhetorical question, "Is the press really going to let him get away with this?" Duh.)

Anyway, perhaps St. John can come up with an explanation for this whilst flying in luxury on his wife's jet. Perhaps the answer lies in the Beer Baroness' tax returns.

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They're Terrified

That's the only explanation for the massive freakout by the RNC and Barbecue McMaverick over this perfectly accurate ad by the DNC:

They know that the more people hear about McCain's "100 Years" the more people will turn away in horror. (Then again, Paul "Comblicker" Wolfowitz claimed yesterday yesterday that the US occupation of Iraq ended nearly four years ago so...)

Oh, and how can we miss the delicious richness of the Republican National Committee complaining about 'distortions." When they saw that ad they probably said "rats!".

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