Hey! Guess What?

Cartoon: Al Jazeera
*Fluency in Arabic not required to get the punchline*

In The While You Were Away Pounding The War Drums Department

My goodness--how inconvenient! We've got a war-mongerers election here at home to worry about, & suddenly it seems diplomacy, talks, & cooperation with the world's most recalcitrant leaders is called for, or somethin'.

News today that "Dear Leader" Kim Il Jong purports to have pulled off a nuclear test (after the spectacular fizzle of his planned fireworks on the 4th of July). Hit the title bar for Washington Post article.

Where will we get the fortitude & political will to face down a nuclear threat when we haven't even been able to deal with improvised roadside bombs by a rag-tag gang of bandidoes a gazillion billion dollars later?

I know, let's outsource the problem to Japan's rising neo-fascists, much as we did the Israelis with Hezbollah.

It's a complex & dangerous world out there, and we need more sophisticated tools in the toolbox to deal with it. Right now, we've only got cowboys with hammers.