Dr. Strangelaugh
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iranian Bomb.
By JAMES TARANTO
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength," the longshoreman cum philosopher Eric Hoffer once observed. Hoffer died in 1983, so he probably wasn't referring specifically to Joe Biden's performance in last night's debate. Still, the observation is fitting.
When two rhesus macaques are trapped together in a small cage, they try everything they can to avoid a fight. . . . To avoid immediate aggression, and to reduce stress, an act of communication is needed to break the ice and make it clear to the other monkey that no harm is intended (or expected). Macaque monkeys bare their teeth to communicate fear and friendly intentions. If this "bared-teeth display"--the evolutionary precursor to the human smile--is well received, it can function as a prelude to grooming. One monkey brushes and cleans the other's fur, gently massaging the skin while picking and eating parasites. This act can both relax and appease the other monkey, virtually eliminating the chance of an attack.
So, if you are a rhesus macaque and find yourself trapped in a small cage with another macaque, you know what to do: bare your teeth and start grooming. If you are a human and find yourself riding in an elevator with a stranger, in theory you could do the same thing (or the human equivalent thereof): smile and make small talk.
That debate was so annoying! Some of the CNN commentators are talking about how Biden did what he came to do, to fire up the Democrats. "This was not for the independents," says Van Jones. Okay, well, but independents were watching, and Biden was horribly rude. He created this disturbing atmosphere of anxiety.
The worst part of the debate and the part that I wish Ryan had been able to counter was when Biden started in on the "They don't have a bomb to put (the fissile material) into."
This is outrageous. The hard part of building a nuclear weapon is to get the fissile material, bomb designs are a dime a dozen and anyone who has access to a copy of the Progressive Magazine from the 1970s when they published a bomb design they had dug up from some documents that were found in the Los Alamos public library can build one.
The A.Q. Khan design has long been available to them including any refinements the North Koreans have made.
Making a warhead that can fit on a missile may be harder, but building a basic nuclear weapon that could be put on an airliner or a ship is easy once you have the material.
- "[Hans Christian] Andersen's tale doesn't end there. When the little boy exposes him, the emperor turns a blind eye and says, 'This procession has got to go on.' Andersen concludes the story, 'So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all.' "--William Bennett, CNN.com, Oct. 11
- "Moderator Raddatz Kept the Trains Moving"--headline, USA Today, USA Today, Oct. 12
Here's Camille Paglia, one of the two most prominent living natives of Endicott, N.Y., in an interview with Salon:
What is the administration's response to the murder of our ambassador [in Libya]? Nothing. Do we have a presidency or not? The ambassador's journal was lying on the floor for CNN to find, and it took weeks for the FBI to get there and spend a day--after sensitive documents were stripped long ago. The State Department has clearly become a morass of political correctness. Hillary and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice should resign. Of course the mainstream media were mum for weeks about the Libyan scandal. And that just empowers the right-wing in the country. The media's pampering and protection of Obama over the years simply led to his weakening--which was on excruciating public display at his first debate with Romney, who landed blow after blow.
Columnist Joe Nocera explains a joke for the benefit of humor-impaired New York Times readers:
Do you remember that moment in the first Austin Powers movie when Dr. Evil, back in action after being cryogenically frozen for 30 years, gets his hands on a nuclear warhead? "If you want it back," he snarls to a group of world leaders who have gathered in a secret United Nations bunker, "you will have to pay me"--here he pauses for dramatic effect--"one million dollars!" The assembled leaders burst into laughter because it was such a pathetically small sum.
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman made us laugh with the anticlimactic end to this rant:
Republicans are dead wrong.
The latest devastating demonstration of that wrongness comes from the International Monetary Fund, which has just released its World Economic Outlook, a report combining short-term prediction with insightful economic analysis. This report is a grim and disturbing document, telling us that the world economy is doing significantly worse than expected, with rising risks of global recession. But the report isn't just downbeat; it contains a careful analysis of the reasons things are going so badly. And what this analysis concludes is that a disproportionate share of the bad news is coming from countries pursuing the kind of austerity policies Republicans want to impose on America.
O.K., it doesn't say that in so many words.
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