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This story from Murray Waas is just so bizarre that I haven't quite known how to respond:

John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.

Timmons' activities occurred in the years following the first Gulf War, when Washington considered Iraq to be a rogue enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism. His dealings on behalf of the deceased Iraqi leader stand in stark contrast to the views his current employer held at the time.

John McCain strongly supported the 1991 military action against Iraq, and as recently as Sunday described Saddam Hussein as a one-time menace to the region who had "stated categorically that he would acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he would use them wherever he could."

Timmons declined to comment for this story.

Fortunately, Democracy Arsenal's Patrick Berry isn't at a loss for words:

McCain's campaign is now intimately tied to Saddam Hussein's murderous regime in Iraq with William Timmons overseeing his transition planning and team. Under McCain's own rubric then, he himself is palling around with a pal of a globally malevolent terrorist who, over decades, killed tens of thousands. Let's break it down further: McCain continues to assert that 9/11 and Saddam Hussein's Iraq are fundamentally linked. Under his own standard, McCain has on his staff, in one of the most important jobs on the campaign, a man, Timmons, who aided, abetted and promoted a regime, which, in McCain's mind, had a hand in the murder of thousands of Americans on September 11. Using McCainian logic, he has hired an accomplice to 9/11. Now if that doesn't call his judgment into question, I don't know what will.

If McCain is foolish enough to bring up Obama's "association" with Ayers tonight, I hope Barack responds just like that.

Q1: Aside from being former Secretaries of State, what do these five people have in common with one another?

Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, James Baker and Henry Kissinger

A1: They all support Sen. Obama's call for direct talks with Iran.

More from that interview:

GIBSON: Let me turn to Iran. Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?

PALIN: I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes.

GIBSON: So what should we do about a nuclear Iran?

PALIN: We have got to make sure that these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them.So we have got to put the pressure on Iran.

GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

PALIN: Well, first, we are friends with Israel and I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.

GIBSON: So if we wouldn't second guess it and they decided they needed to do it because Iran was an existential threat, we would cooperative or agree with that.

PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.

GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right.

PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.

We should never second guess Israel? No matter what they do? No matter how far off the rails they go? And in the follow-up, we should agree with and cooperate with them no matter what?

This is actually worse than something that might prompt my typical "at what point did Israel become our 51st state" response, because state's don't set foreign policy. Palin's response is fairly typical for a neo-con, but because of its brevity (most likely because she was repeating a prepared line - how else to explain the word for word parroting?) it is remarkably clear.

Neo-conservatives believe that the security of Israel is so important that we ought to let them lead us around by the nose. If Israel wants to bomb Iran, we must go along with it. If Israel decides it is right, we must agree. Israel gets to make the decisions based on their own national interest, and we must go along with whatever they decide.

I ask again: Is this putting America first?

Clarity.

I honestly wasn't planning on blogging about McCain's latest failed attempt at humor. The way I figured it, people who don't like McCain aren't going to like what he said, and people who do aren't going to understand what all of the fuss is about. But Matt Yglesias's response is so good that I've changed my mind:

When you look at something like the AP's covering for John McCain as he embarrassingly jokes about his desire to kill Iranian civilians, it's worth considering how the AP would have reported this if the shoe were on the other foot. Ahmadenijad makes a "joke," at a political rally, about killing Americans. Soft-focus human interest story? I doubt it. Heck, what would John McCain's reaction be if that happened?

This is precisely the point that needs to be made here. Many on the right seem to have an endless ability to hyperventilate whenever someone in the Middle East screams "Death to America," even in situations where it isn't entirely clear that the screamers mean to do anything more than scream. "We must take their threats seriously," they tell us. "Remember how we ignored Hilter?"

Meanwhile, McCain makes a joke about average Iranian citizens dying and the very same people tell us that we are all just supposed to laugh it off. "That's politics," they say. "Lighten up!"

And then, without missing a beat, they return to breathlessness over Iran's long-range missile test, ignoring entirely how all of this is connected. Because, of course, building and testing long-range missiles is an entirely rational thing for Iran to do when one of the two candidates for president of the world's only superpower thinks it is amusing to joke about dead Iranian civilians.

Like Matt says, just imagine what the reaction would be if Ahmadenijad made a similar joke. No less than Sen. McCain himself would tell us how horrible it was, and how it should make clear to everyone just how serious a threat Iran is. But not so in the reverse. In the reverse it is merely a harmless joke that should be laughed off.

Spent yesterday deep in the dissertation. Here's what I missed:

+ McCain unveiled his sad excuse for a budget yesterday. No numbers, and a promise to balance the budget through "victory in Iraq." But this one deserved a full post, so go and read it here!

+ And that wasn't the only brilliant thing Sen. McCain did yesterday. He also hired Rudy Giuliania's former campaign manager as his political director. It's good to see that McCain believes in rewarding success. Or something.

+ Oh, and he loves Crocs. Yes, Crocs.

+ Looks like my prediction of an Obama-Webb ticket just went down in flames. I'll be honest: it never once occurred to me that Webb would voluntarily take himself out of the running. Not once.

+ Sen. Lieberman - Connecticut's finest! - has lost it. According to him, "Iran not only represents an "existential threat" to Israel but also the Middle East and the United States." Iran is a nation of 60+ million people with an economy roughly the size of our defense budget. And yet he believes they could take down Israel, the entire Arab world, and the United States? Is he high?

+ FoxNews has done lots of ridiculous things over the years, but this is without any doubt the worst of the worst.

+ As I predicted back in 2004, Gavin Newsom's brave stand on marriage equality is going to be a huge plus for him when - and it is when, not if - he runs for Governor of California in 2010.

+ Ta-Nehisi explains why there are no black Republicans.

+ Last week, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) voted against the new GI Bill. This week, he's saying that he was "proud to support" it. I guess he figures that if both McCain and Bush can get away with it

+ If you are wondering why people are making such a fuss over Florida Gov. Christ's shotgun marriage, this is why.

+ And last but certainly not least, the TSA is considering a proposal that would require all airline passengers to wear remote-controlled stun bracelets while in flight. Somewhere in a cave along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, bin Laden is laughing uncontrollably at us.

No more Summer Session duties. Time to get caught up on things....

+ B.U. IR prof Andy Bacevich had another scorching op-ed in yesterday's Boston Globe. As much fire as Bush draws from the left, the most withering stuff comes from disaffected, life-long conservatives like Bacevich. Matt Yglesias has a great follow-on piece here.

+ Did you know that the airborne version of the Straight Talk Express features "a special area with a couch and two captain's chairs" set up for intimate interviews with the candidate himself? And that "only the good reporters" will be allowed into the areas? And that if McCain and his people know "that you have a hostile line of questioning or you have a long and well documented critique," that you'll never be invited in? Behold John McCain, the straight talking, straight shooting man of the people!

+ Obama made a big announcement yesterday about his plans for a new approach to faith-based initiatives. Not surprisingly, the media absolutely mangled the coverage. Here's the section that virtually everyone missed in the initial round of coverage:

"Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this partnership will endanger that idea - so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them - or against the people you hire - on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we'll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work."

This makes the program nothing whatsoever like Bush's program. If a religious group wants in to this program, they are going to have to agree to abide by very strict non-discrimination and non-proselytization provisions. Assuming that they are willing to do that, and that there is oversight to ensure that they are in fact doing what they have promised, I really don't see why anyone would be opposed to this. Because as Steve Benen points out (and for the record, he worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State during the early years of the Bush administration:

Obama has identified the pre-Bush safeguards and strengthens them, not abandons them.

By all appearances, Obama's vision is consistent with what Bush's plan would have been, if Bush cared about constitutional law, the interests of taxpayers, the rights of families in need, and the integrity of religious institutions.... There's simply nothing wrong with this. If Obama honors church-state separation and keeps the safeguards in place, as he clearly intends to do, there's no reason the government can't partner with ministries willing to provide a secular social service.

At bottom, this is about community organizing, not religion. Virtually everyone seems to have missed that here. Virtually...

+ Put that together with this - Obama announcing his opposition to a CA ballot measure banning same-sex marriages - and it seems to me that he had quite the day yesterday.

+ Andrew Sullivan has headed to P-Town for his annual vacation, and in his study he uncovered a pre-Iraq war book from Lawrence Kaplan and Bill Kristol, "The War Over Iraq." Amazingly, he's decided to reread it and report back on what Kaplan and Kristol had predicted and promised. Shock and surprise! They were wrong, wrong, wrong, about everything, everything, everything! But I'll be honest: even I was shocked by the magnitude of their errors. And to think... for all those errors he got a gig at the New York Times.

What does Biggie Smalls have to do with Israel and Iran? Ezra and Tony explain.