What Republicans really care about

Lower taxes for rich people outweigh all other issues.

The deficit? Not as important as lower taxes for the rich.

A reduced risk of nuclear proliferation or war? Not as important as lower taxes for the rich.

Citizenship for immigrant soldiers? Not as important as lower taxes for the rich.

Extension of unemployment benefits? Of course, not as important as lower taxes for the rich.

Repeal of don't ask, don't tell? Oh, right, they're against that anyway.

The core Republican view of the world holds that, if rich people are even better off, everyone else is either better off or doesn't deserve to be better off. Mostly the latter. Peons.

Impotent op-ed

"Republicans must end partisanship"

Past nuclear arms control treaties have won broad bipartisan support, and it should be no different for this treaty.

Where has John Rhinelander been for the past twenty years? Republicans don't do bipartisan. They fight using every means they can lay their hands on until Democrats concede or fail.

In the past, as bad as it often was, the Republican Party wasn't led around by the nose by Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh, with Jim DeMint trying desperately ("pick me, pick me!") to get out in front of the frothing wingnuts.

Now it's Republicans, making the world worse one obstruction at a time!

Might as well ask a two-year-old to please stop throwing tantrums. The difference of course is that a two-year-old will eventually become three, while Republicans will only get more extreme, as they have through all of the last fifty years.

Sarah Palin's appeal

Sarah Palin is only convincing to people who aren't mature enough graduate from middle school. That's why Heathers bullshit like this comes out of her well-lipsticked mouth:

"It's kinda like getting out in the playground, a bunch of kids ready to fight, and one of the kids saying 'go ahead, punch me in the face, I am not going to retaliate, go ahead and do what you want to with me.' "

It deserves every bit of President Obama's condescension, if not more:

"[L]ast I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues."

...

"I would say to them is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin."

Palin's an idiot. No news there. And of course she's forgotten that Ronald Reagan also signed a START treaty with the Russians.

Why doesn't the media do something equally random and ask Obama about Anne Hathaway's opinions? She's much prettier than Palin, and - as a very special bonus - she is undoubtedly smarter and better informed.

Yo mama Pyongs her yang

Hillary Clinton makes a few mildly derisive comments about North Korea:

"small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention."

The PRK, which could teach even Rush Limbaugh a thing or two about incendiary bullshit, responds with ironclad proof that Hillary is spot on:

At a meeting of southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman blasted Clinton for what he called a "spate of vulgar remarks unbecoming for her position everywhere she went since she was sworn in," according to the state-run KCNA news agency.

The spokesman called Clinton "by no means intelligent" and a "funny lady."

"Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping," the statement said.

There are lots of possible rejoinders appropriate for middle school. How's that sticks and grass diet working out? Gooood haircut - you still using the Flowbee? Pointing and giggling would also be fun.

But, alas, we're the grown-ups here. Hillary can't even laugh and say, "At least they didn't call me a bitch."

It might be reasonable to mention that this sort of behavior is why we don't want them holding nukes. North Korea, putting the MAD back into nuclear policy! Socialist workers paradise? I'd hate to see hell.

Extremists need enemies

It's far from clear why Muslim terrorists attacked civilians in Mumbai, but extremists need enemies. Most of all, when under pressure, they need to share their enemies and their hatreds with the populations that they hide among.

It's easy to stir up long-standing secular and sectarian enmities between India and Pakistan. They're never far below the surface.

Even a war of words between these two nuclear powers will rally Pakistanis to all things Pakistani and all things Islamic, even terrorist organizations. That benefits all the terrorist groups that thrive on chaos.

The U.S. has enough electronic surveillance to know already where these terrorists attacked from. The NSA knows who took their calls in Waziristan. Whether we'll ever know is another question.

Don't worry, be happy

This is tantamount to a lie:

Members of Dr. ElBaradei’s staff and outside experts cautioned that the amount of missing material remained relatively small. If all the stolen material were lumped together, it would not be enough to build even one nuclear device, they said.

Maybe the sum of what has been stolen this year, but much more is missing in the history of uranium and plutonium. Oh, they also said stolen. They're not counting unexplained losses.

Another feature of the Bushist obsession with Saddam is that they've given lower priority to the steady work of nuclear security.

Mitt right but stupid

Look, non-proliferation has always been a liberal approach to a national security problem. The internationalists were for it, the conservatives simply wanted to use military force. Anyone ever heard of preemption? Of course, the internationalists were not all liberals, but the driving force behind engaging adversary and ally alike to reduce the spread of nuclear weaponry was us libs.

People who have a brain understand that arms control and preemption may both be needed at different times. You can tell liberals from conservatives by which stick they reach for first.

Mitt Romney gets points for saying so but only enough to get him the booby prize.

What's really stupid on his part, though, is that his definition of 'bipartisan' is "caving to the conservatives". I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that he labors under this misconception, since that has been the Broderist, Liebermanesque definition for the past twenty years.

True to form, John Roberts totally misses the obvious logic of the story.